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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22607455">everything is you</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cafelesbian/pseuds/Cafelesbian'>Cafelesbian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Falling In Love, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mamma Mia! References, this is abt wanda and sam but honestly it is more of a wanda and bucky bff story, though his name is jarvis here</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:42:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>24,813</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22607455</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cafelesbian/pseuds/Cafelesbian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Wanda should feel guilty for flirting so shamelessly and obviously with her best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend while her boyfriend is asleep a few blocks away, but she doesn’t. </p><p>or Wanda and Sam fall in love and their best friends don’t notice. Set during <em>tell me how to breathe</em> and <em>even in the dark.</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff/Sam Wilson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1428403</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. one</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>idk you guys told me to keep posting these little things so here i am this one is super self indulgent and fluffy</p><p>i feel like it’s worth clarifying i have zero opinions on wanda and sam in canon i just like them as a couple in this universe, that’s all</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They meet in the elevator. He gives her a smile that she knows is flirting, and he’s cute so she smiles back, even though she has a boyfriend and knows this won’t go anywhere. He lets her step in first, and she hits the button for the penthouse and he blinks at her.</p><p>“You a friend of Bucky’s?” he says, tilting his head.</p><p>Wanda blinks. “Yeah,” she answers, and then, glancing at the wrapped package in his hand, “Are you?”</p><p>“Yeah,” the guy says, “I mean. More of Steve’s. But I know Bucky.” He sticks a hand out. “Sam.”</p><p>She takes it. “Wanda.”</p><p>“He mentioned you,” Sam says, nodding. “I went to high school with them.”</p><p>She bites back the urge to ask him more about that. She likes Steve, but she doesn’t know if she trusts him yet. He hasn’t given her a reason not to, but she’s wary anyway. What he appears to have given Bucky is too good to be true.</p><p>“Very nice,” she says instead, and then the doors pull open and he lets her out first. She knocks, and Bucky gets it, and she hugs him and hides her astonishment at how healthy he looks.</p><p>“Happy birthday,” she tells him, and he laughs and says thanks and hugs her again, then Sam. She gives Steve a quick squeeze too.</p><p>She’s still not used to seeing him like this. Laughing, color in his cheeks, not flinching away from any brush of contact. Steve, to his impossible credit, seems to be the catalyst for this. She watches them carefully all night, the way she has done the last few times she’s been with them, and it still makes her head spin, the difference. They stay turned towards each other constantly, magnetic and effortless. </p><p>She met Steve for the first time a few weeks prior. The three of them went out to dinner at The Smith, and Wanda had been so stressed and so astonished that Bucky was allowing this to happen that she hadn’t actually been prepared for what it would be like to sit there with Bucky, letting this incredibly hot guy lay an arm over his shoulders and laughing at his jokes and wearing a cashmere sweater that definitely cost four times what he had once been charging perverts to have sex with him. Bucky, at one point, slipped to the bathroom, and Wanda had looked at Steve and taken a breath.</p><p>“I know Bucky can take care of himself,” she said, sipping her wine, “and I know he’ll kill me for saying this. But if you hurt him I have friends who will tear your limbs off and throw them in the Hudson River.” It’s not a lie. Scott and Luis and Peter and Gamora would do it. So would she.</p><p>Steve choked on his scallop. Then, after the initial shock, he smiled nervously and repliesd “Sounds like what anyone who hurts him deserves.”</p><p>Wanda smiled, thawing a little. “Glad we agree,” she says, and Steve nodded, and then Bucky came back and tucked himself into Steve’s side and she relaxed a little.</p><p>“How was he?” Scott asked her anxiously, the second she got home. He had, of course, already looked up and found every single thing about Steve, his address and his lack of a criminal record and his phone number and his bank statements, which she and Luis and Scott had pored over one night with a bottle of wine between them, and he had come up spotless, but they are still worried. </p><p>She threw herself down beside him and said, surprised, “Actually good, I think.”</p><p>Scott shut his laptop. “Yeah?”</p><p>She nodded. “I think. He, uh.” She blinked. “Bucky seems really happy.” Scott looked bewildered. She shrugged. “He was laughing and everything. He let him kiss him on the cheek. He seemed really comfortable.”</p><p>“That’s so, so good,” Scott said weakly. She nodded.</p><p>He is not here today because he and his girlfriend are visiting her parents out of town, but they’re getting dinner with Bucky at some point when he’s back. </p><p>“How’s Jarvis?” Bucky asks at one point, not hiding the distaste. She rolls her eyes and flicks her napkin at him.</p><p>“How’s Steve?” she replies instead. Bucky nods to the kitchen, where Steve is stacking plates.</p><p>“See for yourself,” he says, and his face goes soft. Then, “I’m letting you guys hang out. You won’t even let me meet the guy.”</p><p>That’s fair. She doesn’t tell him that it’s because Jarvis tells her she’s mature for her age and hanging out with a bunch of twenty-one year olds isn’t his forte. “He’s busy,” she answers, “and he’s fine, thanks for asking.”</p><p>Bucky opens his mouth again, and then Steve slips in beside him and lays an arm over his shoulders, and Bucky leans comfortably into his side and rests his head against him, and Wanda bites her lip against a smile.</p><p>Later, she walks with Sam to the subway. It’s stale and cold, but they tread slowly anyway.</p><p>“Is that how they were in high school?” Wanda asks him.</p><p>“Bucky and Steve?” She nods. “Yeah. It’s disgusting.”</p><p>She laughs. He does too, and then he sobers up.</p><p>“I’d rather see Steve like that, though.” He pauses, and Wanda turns to him, intrigued. “He was, uh. He missed him. A lot.”</p><p>“Ah,” she says.</p><p>Sam grins at her. “You can trust him, you know. He’d saw his leg off before he’d hurt Bucky.”</p><p>That gets her to stop. “What makes you say that?” It relieves her, but she doesn’t tell him that yet.</p><p>Sam shrugs. “I mean, I saw you tracking them all night. And just… uh, I know some of what happened to Bucky. I get why you’d be cautious.” She swallows. “Steve fucking loves him, though. I promise.”</p><p>She doesn’t answer for a few beats, but she can feel him watching her. “Good,” she says eventually, and means it. “Thanks, Sam.”</p><p>He smiles and looks down, and they walk quietly for another block.</p><p>“You heading uptown?” Sam asks her. They’ve arrived.</p><p>“Downtown,” she tells him, mildly disappointed. “Guess I’ll be seeing you.”</p><p>He smiles and scratches his neck. “Yeah. Take care, Wanda.”</p><p>She pats him awkwardly on the shoulder as a goodbye, and he laughs, and so does she. Then he heads down into the train, and she shakes herself off and starts home.</p><p>***</p><p><em>are you busy? </em>Bucky texts her, a few weeks after that.</p><p>She is not. She’s in her apartment avoiding her laundry, and when she tells him that, he asks if she wants to meet him for lunch and she tells him of course she does, and they pick a little lunch place between where she is and where he’s just getting out of therapy that she could never afford but that Bucky can now.</p><p>He’s quiet. He’s generally quiet, but she can tell he’s thinking about something because he won’t quite look at her.</p><p>“You okay?” Wanda says gently. Steve has almost won her over, but it’s still tentative trust that he can lose very easily if he’s done something to Bucky.</p><p>Bucky bites his lip and traces over a scratch on the table. “Can I talk to you about something?” he asks softly.</p><p>“Yeah,” she says right away, worried, “of course.”</p><p>He swallows. “That guy who was—who was hurting me last year,” he whispers. </p><p>She draws a breath. He has never spoken to her about this and she almost assumed he never would. He doesn’t bother asking if she remembers, because they both know she’ll never forget any of it, Bucky’s body mauled into something so brutalized and abused it was hard to believe he could still breathe, shuddering and convulsing with terror, tears pouring down bruised, split skin as he whimpered <em>I’m not his, I don’t wanna be his.</em></p><p>She reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. He squeezes back.</p><p>“His name—his name’s Alexander Pierce.” His voice quivers. “He’s the CEO of Principle Trust Bank.”</p><p><em>Jesus,</em> Wanda thinks, but bites it back. She feels vaguely ill. She remembers Bucky telling her he went home with him, almost laughing it off, certainly not understanding what he was getting himself into. </p><p>Bucky won’t look at her, but he holds her hand. “He, um. He—he drugged me and—and—” He grits his teeth. “And he raped me. And he—he, um.” His voice breaks. “Fuck,” he whispers.</p><p>“It’s okay, Buck,” she says softly. “Babe, it’s okay. I’m here, take your time.” Her heart slingshots in her chest, but she keeps her voice calm, like her best friend telling her that he was roofied and raped by the CEO of the biggest bank in America is nothing out of the ordinary. Still, she can’t believe he’s saying it at all. “I love you,” Wanda tells him, just because.</p><p>He squeezes her hand again, and swallows. “He took photos,” Bucky whispers, and his cheeks flush. Wanda inhales, a sharp, horrified breath she can’t stop. She doesn’t interrupt him, though. “He, um. He blackmailed me with them.” Tears slip down his cheeks. “That’s why—that’s why I went back.”</p><p>“Oh, Bucky,” she says. Her chest aches. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” She is so sorry that it pushes tears against her throat, the knowledge that she had been there with him and not stopped this. She shuts her eyes. “Thank you for telling me,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry, Buck,” she says again.</p><p>He takes a shaky breath. “You don’t think it was my fault?” he whispers.</p><p>She stares at him. “Jesus, Bucky, of course it wasn’t your fault.”</p><p>He doesn’t say anything, but the tears pour harder. They hold hands and breathe for two minutes, and then Bucky talks again, his voice soft and scared.</p><p>“Steve wants me to press charges,” Bucky tells her.</p><p>“What do you want to do?” Wanda makes herself say, even though she thinks Steve is probably one thousand percent wrong on this one.</p><p>“I won’t win,” Bucky replies, and swallows.</p><p>She wishes she could say ‘That’s not true, of course you will,’ but she’s knows these things, knows that a hooker versus a CEO isn’t a case, it’s an execution. They will rip him to shreds. She doesn’t say that either, though.</p><p>“You don’t know that,” she says carefully. </p><p>Bucky laughs, dry and wrecked. “C’mon, Wanda. Not from you.”</p><p>“I mean it,” she says. Then she swallows. “Does he—does he still have the photos?” That, she figures, is the one sliver of a chance Bucky has here.</p><p>Bucky winces. “I don’t know,” he whispers. Then he swallows. “What do you think I should do?”</p><p>She gives him a long look and thinks this over. “He really, really hurt you,” she says, as softly as she can. Bucky blinks against tears and nods. “It’s your choice, Bucky.” Steve Rogers better be emphasizing that one. “What I think doesn’t matter.”</p><p>“Of course what you think, matters, Wanda,” Bucky says.</p><p>She shakes her head. “All that matters here is what you wanna do, babe. You—I’m so proud of you, Bucky, okay?” She is. Steve wracked up a whole lot of points in her mind when Bucky told her Steve had talked him into therapy. “If you don’t wanna ever be in the same room with him again, then you shouldn’t have to. But I think—I think if there’s any part of you that wants to see him pay—which he fucking should—then you should do it.”</p><p>He tells her to come over for dinner, and she does. Steve is there already, and so is Sam. Bucky leans, exhausted, into Steve’s side, and Steve kisses his forehead and holds him, and Sam throws her a look that says,<em> I told you so.</em></p><p>It’s a nice night. They order Thai food and laugh about easy, surface level things and don’t talk about the possibility of a court case anymore. She leaves with Sam again, after hugging and thanking them and making coffee plans for next week.</p><p>“It’s nice out,” Wanda muses, when they get out. It is. Winter has thawed away to nothing more than a breeze, and late-night February glitters in white and red around them.</p><p>Sam nods. Then he grins. “You doing anything right now?”</p><p>Wanda glances up and snorts. “No?”</p><p>Sam looks down, sheepish. “There’s a great karaoke bar near here,” he tells her. “The night is young.”</p><p>She bursts out laughing. “Are you a big karaoke enthusiast, Sam Wilson?”</p><p>“I’m pretty incredible,” Sam tells her. </p><p>She laughs and glances at her phone. Jarvis is busy tonight, and she isn’t tired, and she hasn’t done karaoke in years, so she looks up and smirks and says, “You better live up to that.”</p><p>He looks delighted, and they walk the four blocks to the club together.</p><p>It’s tiny and tacky, fluorescent disco balls casting the whole place incheap, oversaturated lighting, but she likes it anyway. They both get margaritas with enough sugar to stop their hearts and kind of sway together to drunk strangers singing Don’t Stop Believin’ and Back to Black, and at one point, Sam disappears. When he returns, he’s smirking.</p><p>“Do one with me,” Sam tells her, grabbing her lightly by the arm. She snorts.</p><p>“Not a chance, buddy.”</p><p>“I already queued it up.”</p><p>She laughs, incredulous. “Guess you’ll have to show your karaoke skills solo.”</p><p>Sam keeps giving her that stupid, easy grin. “It’s a duet.”</p><p>“Oh, really?”</p><p>“Yeah. Lay All Your Love On Me.”</p><p>She bursts out laughing. “Maybe I don’t like Mamma Mia.”</p><p>“Everyone likes Mamma Mia, Wanda,” Sam replies. Leaning back a little, he adds, “Please?”</p><p>She rolls her eyes and downs the rest of her cocktail. “You’re so fucking annoying,” she tells him, but she smiles and jerks her head towards the stage.</p><p>He pulls her up, laughing, and they do it, their stupid duet, bouncing a little and definitely flirting, but Wanda tells herself it’s okay, it’s just a joke. Sam, admittedly, is very good at karaoke. He commits, throwing himself to his knees at one point, and when it’s done, Wanda wraps an arm around his shoulders and kisses him on the cheek.</p><p>“See? We killed that!” He yells, over people cheering.</p><p>“Yeah, you owe me for that one,” she replies, but her cheeks are flushed with elation as they make their way off stage.</p><p>“You guys are a hot couple!” Some young drunk guy yells at them. Wanda rolls her eyes and keeps walking. Sam, she notices, doesn’t correct him either.</p><p>It’s one, now, and the bar is starting to grow sparse. “I really should get home,” Wanda says, “I gotta work at ten tomorrow.”</p><p>Sam nods. “I’ll walk with you to the subway.”</p><p>Outside, it has grown colder. The light is stale and weary and empty, but there’s something peaceful about it, which Wanda doesn’t always feel about New York.</p><p>“I didn’t peg you for a musical theater guy,” she tells him, lips quirking into a smile.</p><p>He laughs. “I did theater in high school,” he tells her, “I played Skye when we did Mamma Mia. Not to brag.”</p><p>She shakes her head. “Please tell me Bucky and Steve went to that and I can hear every detail.”</p><p>Sam snorts. “I’m sure they were feeling each other up in the back.”</p><p>Wanda rolls her eyes and smiles down.</p><p>Sam turns to her, eyes bright with the cold and the cheap deli awning lights. “You knew that whole song,” he notes, and grins. “Secret musical theater history there?”</p><p>She feels unpleasantly cold suddenly. “My mom liked ABBA,” she says, and swallows.</p><p>She can feel Sam studying her, but he doesn’t push. “Did Bucky talk to you about Pierce?” Sam asks suddenly.</p><p>She looks up, surprised. Relieved for the pivot. “Yeah,” she says, after a moment. “Why?”</p><p>He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I’m just worried about them.”</p><p>“Yeah,” she agrees vaguely. She turns a coin over in her pocket and doesn’t say anything else. “They’re gonna be okay,” she says, and is surprised by how much she believes it. The fact that, all things considered, Bucky is doing better than her makes her feel selfishly and terribly shocked.</p><p>“That was fun,” Wanda tells him, and means it. He smiles again. “I’ll see you.”</p><p>Sam looks like he might say something, but then he shifts his weight and says, “Yeah, it was. You’re a great duet partner.”</p><p>She smiles. Infuriatingly, she blushes. “Next time we’ll do Endless Love.”</p><p>He laughs. “You aren’t ready for that.”</p><p>“Try me,” she replies. Maybe she should feel guilty for flirting so shamelessly and obviously with her best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend while her boyfriend is asleep a few blocks away, but she doesn’t. </p><p>He smiles. He’s lovely, she thinks, lovely enough that she can acknowledge that without feeling too guilty. “Goodnight, Sam,” she says, tilting her head a little.</p><p>“‘Night, Wanda,” he says. “Let me know you get home.”</p><p>“Sure,” she says. They wait there a beat longer for something else, and then she shakes it off and heads down the steps. </p><p>***</p><p>The next time she sees Sam is a few weeks later, and by accident. She’s working, and someone says her name so she looks up from stocking coffee grounds and blinks. Natasha leans over the counter, grinning.</p><p>She smiles back and straightens up. “Hey.” They’ve only met the once at Steve and Bucky’s, and Wanda was intimidated by her, but right now, she smiles and stands, sweeping hair out of her face.</p><p>“I didn’t know you worked here,” Nat comments.</p><p>She shrugs, momentarily unsure if she’s being judged. “Yeah,” she says carefully. She started here five or so months ago, shortly before Bucky got Steve back and immediately before she met Jarvis. She replaced one of Peter’s friends, at his suggestion, and she bitches about it as much as any twenty-one year old does about their customer service job, but she doesn’t mind, even likes it, the rich espresso smell in the air and the people she works with and the lack of constant, repulsive male attention. </p><p>“This is my new favorite cafe,” Nat replies, and Wanda relaxes a little, confident she isn’t being talked down to.</p><p>“Do you live around here?” Wanda asks her, and then, “Also, do you want a coffee?”</p><p>Nat laughs. “A latte?” Wanda nods. “You’re amazing, thanks. Uh, yeah, I’m on seventeenth and seventh with my girlfriend. We just moved a couple weeks ago.”</p><p>Wanda smiles and hands her the drink. “Congrats,” she says, “I like it over here.”</p><p>“Me, too.” Nat moves to pay, and Wanda waves her off, and she laughs and shoves a few bucks into the tip jar.</p><p>She sits a few feet away, typing something vigorously, and when the store empties out Wanda brings her a muffin and Nat tells her she’s an angel.</p><p>“What time do you get off?” Natasha asks her, before she leaves the table.</p><p>“Six.”</p><p>She smiles. “I’m getting dumplings with Sam at seven, if you wanna join.”</p><p>“I don’t wanna crash,” Wanda says, and Nat waves a hand.</p><p>“Please crash. We want you to.”</p><p>So she does. They sit in the corner of a cheap little dumpling place in the West Village, sharing a few dishes and laughing. Sam is terrible with chopsticks, and Wanda keeps reaching hers over to hold his dumplings in places while he stabs them and Sam gives her a sheepish little smile in response and she has to look away.</p><p>“You guys have been friends since high school?” Wanda asks them, at one point.</p><p>They share a look. “Yeah,” Sam says, “we got closer after, though.” </p><p>“Fuck you,” Nat laughs, “we were close in high school. I went to all your stupid soccer games.”</p><p>Sam scoffs. “You went with Bucky, who was going for Steve. Don’t change history.”</p><p>“We went to prom together.”</p><p>He snorts. “We did that to make it look like we were all going as a group so Steve and Bucky’s parents wouldn’t hit the roof.” He catches himself a moment too late, and they all grimace.</p><p>Nat coughs, though, and lays an arm over Sam’s shoulders. “We were friends in high school because of Steve and Buck, mainly, and we became besties freshman year of college. Trying to manage a heartbroken Steve Rogers was a great bonding exercise.”</p><p>Wanda makes herself laugh, even though the whole thing is a little too fucked up to be funny. Sam gives her a sad, resigned smile.</p><p>“That must’ve been hard,” Wanda says, prompting them a little.</p><p>Sam rubs his neck. “It was brutal.”</p><p>“He was a mess,” Natasha adds, biting her lip. “And, you know, we’d just lost our friend, and we had no idea where he was, but you can’t exactly complain to the guy who’s just lost the love of his life about how sad you are. So, you know. Not a great situation for anyone.”</p><p>They go, after that, back to Nat’s, where they drink white wine and harass Peggy to stop reviewing her law school apps until she finally joins them. They make Tollhouse cookies and chat and play Cards Against Humanity until it’s one am and Sam says, with horror, that he has class tomorrow and bids them all goodbye.</p><p>Wanda’s cheeks are flushed from wine and laughing, but she stands and says, “I should go too, I gotta work at eight.”</p><p>“Where do you live?” Natasha asks her.</p><p>“Midtown,” Wanda tells her, “forty-fourth.”</p><p>Nat gives her a pained look. “Don’t go all the way back. Just crash here, you can walk to work tomorrow.”</p><p>“Seriously?” Wanda says.</p><p>She grins. “Seriously. You can borrow pajamas and stuff.”</p><p>She agrees, and when she’s washing her face in Natasha and Peggy’s gorgeous bathroom, Nat knocks quietly on the open door and then leans against the wall.</p><p>“Hey,” Nat says.</p><p>Wanda turns, midway through putting her hair up. Nat swallows, uncharacteristically quiet.</p><p>“Um. I’m just—thanks for being such a good friend to Bucky.” She glances down. “He, uh. I’m glad he wasn’t alone.” She looks up, half-smiles. “He loves you.”</p><p>Wanda smiles a little, easing back against the sink. “I love him,” she replies.</p><p>She looks up again, and grins. “You’re still not sure about Steve.”</p><p>“Is it that obvious?” Wanda replies, and snorts.</p><p>“No,” Natasha says, “Sam told me.”</p><p>She laughs, crossing her arms over her chest. “No, I’m basically convinced now,” she says truthfully, “I think he’ll just always be on thin ice.”</p><p>Nat laughs. “Fair,” she says. “If it helps, I can attest that he has no ulterior motives. He just loves him.” </p><p>Wanda swallows. “I know,” she says. “I’m not—I’m less worried about him hurting him now. I’m worried he’s gonna change his mind.” Bucky said that to her, and she reassured him that that was insane, Steve wouldn’t get bored or annoyed or fed up, but then she went home and wondered why, what sets Steve Rogers apart from every other man in the world in that regard. She’s more or less convinced Steve won’t hurt him in any intentionally cruel way, but she isn’t convinced he won’t ruin it some other way. She’s worried Steve doesn't understand he is loving someone excruciatingly fragile. If he does change his mind, it will ruin Bucky. Nat, she figures, knows and cares enough about him that she can express this.</p><p>Nat nods thoughtfully. “He isn’t,” she says gently, and sounds so certain Wanda is almost convinced. “I watched Steve wreck himself and any semblance of a relationship he had for four years ‘cause he couldn’t stop loving Bucky. Having him back now is like finding the holy grail. More than that.”</p><p>“They aren’t having sex,” Wanda says, before she can stop herself. This is probably crossing a boundary, but she still can’t stop worrying, and having someone here who knows and loves both of them is breaking open this second-hand anxiety.</p><p>“I figured,” Nat replies.</p><p>“Steve’s a twenty-two year old man.” Wanda lets it speak for itself.</p><p>Nat says, “I know, and I know it sounds like wishful thinking to say Steve doesn’t care, but he doesn’t. Steve slept around a lot for the last few years and he was miserable, and now.” She swallows. “It’s like knowing a different person, Wanda. He doesn’t love anything like he loves Bucky. He, like—” She pauses. “He loves him in this way that’s not… attached to other things, the way it seems like it should be. Like it’s more than sex, it’s more than appearance or history or other people’s opinions or all the things that, for other people, would be these huge issues in a relationship. I don’t know, maybe it’s ‘cause they grew up together. He just loves him in this huge, weird way that isn’t impeded on by other things.”</p><p>It does calm her, hearing it from someone who cares about Bucky as much as she does. “Okay,” she says, and nods. “I really want him to be happy.”</p><p>“Me, too,” Nat says softly. She winces a little. “Was it—was it as bad as it seems? The stuff Pierce did to him.”</p><p>Wanda shuts her eyes. “It was worse,” she admits.</p><p>“Fuck,” Natasha says, sad and quiet. Wanda nods. “I wanna fucking kill him.”</p><p>“Me, too,” Wanda says darkly.</p><p>Instead, Nat leans her head on Wanda’s shoulder, and Wanda fits her chin over Nat’s head, and they just stay.</p><p>***</p><p>She doesn’t see Sam for some time after that. He’s getting ready to graduate and she’s working and Bucky and Steve are really their only excuse for seeing each other, and they are tangled up in the chaos of this court case so get-togethers are few and far between.</p><p>She spends a lot of time with Natasha, who parks herself in Wanda’s cafe to write her thesis most afternoons. They click immediately. She’s had girl friends, the other women at the club and other baristas at the coffee shop and, of course, Gamora, who she met through Scott and who once, with her boyfriend, broke a guy’s ankle for showing up at Wanda’s old job and saying horrible, repulsive things to her for about a month. But she missed out on the part of her life where she should have been talking about crushes and getting her hair done by friends the same age as her, and when she tells Nat this, she frowns.</p><p>“You doing anything tonight?” She asks her. Wanda shakes her head. “Wrong. You’re coming over and we’re gonna paint each other’s nails and eat pizza and have a terrible high school sleepover.”</p><p>Wanda laughs. “You really don’t have to do that.”</p><p>Nat purses her lips. “Of course I do. And honestly, I want to. I didn’t get to do that much of that as a kid either.” She pauses. “Being a lesbian is the best way to isolate yourself from high school girls, apparently. I hung out with Steve and Buck and Sam way more.” Wanda huffs out a laugh. “Peggy’s visiting her parents, it’s perfect.”</p><p>So she goes, and, under Nat’s instructions, brings the worst pajamas she has, which is a cat onesie from like two years ago that Scott got her as a joke. (“You gotta wear it over,” Nat says, and she feels absurd, but no one on the A train gives a fuck.) Nat answers her door, hair pulled into pigtails, wearing a polka dot nightgown and they both burst out laughing.</p><p>“You’re a natural,” Nat says, and grabs her by the hand to pull her inside.</p><p>Nat went the whole nine yards. They spread out on her floor, eating chips and drinking Sprite and watching some stupid high school movie that Wanda’s never seen, and she is ridiculously happy.</p><p>At some point, the doorbell shrills, and Nat sits up and, with a groan, gets it.</p><p>It’s Sam, standing there looking as good as he always does, and when he takes the two of them in he laughs, bewildered.</p><p>“Well, hello,” he tells them, reading Natasha’s shirt and then snorting.</p><p>“Hi,” Wanda says. He looks her over and raises an eyebrow, and she finds herself wishing she wasn’t wearing a cat onesie. She runs a self conscious hand through her hair.</p><p>“I feel like I’m interrupting a very important ritual here,” Sam tells them.</p><p>“You are,” Natasha replies. “Are you here for your charger?”</p><p>“Yep,” he says. Then, glancing at the tv, says, “Ooh, Say Anything?”</p><p>Nat snorts. “Do we let him stay?” she asks Wanda, who laughs and replies, “I suppose.”</p><p>Sam grins, settling beside her on the floor and stealing a chip. “Do I want the context on this?” he asks them, gesturing to the entire scene.</p><p>“You wouldn’t comprehend, babe,” Nat tells him, and unpauses the film.</p><p>***</p><p>She finally lets Bucky meet Jarvis in May, when she mentions Steve to him and he’s impressed with the fact that she’s met him (“He’s impressive,” Jarvis says, nodding approvingly, “not many people can make a career out of that.”) They go out to dinner at an Italian place in Williamsburg, and it’s fine. Nothing terrible transpires.</p><p>“You can’t bring up Alexander Pierce,” Wanda tells him, about twenty times before they go.</p><p>“I won’t, babe,” he replies, shaking his head.</p><p>Twenty minutes in, though, he looks at Bucky and says, “I think it’s good, what you’re doing. CEOs and guys like that get away with so much.” Wanda finds herself hating him for a moment.</p><p>“Although,” he adds, as Wanda stares at him, appalled, “I’ve got to give him credit. His hedge fund has done a lot of good for a lot of people.”</p><p>Bucky swallows and bites his lip, turning in on himself. </p><p>Steve sets his glass down and gives him a cold, long warning look, and Jarvis seems to back the fuck off.</p><p>He leaves early, (“So sorry, early day tomorrow, really lovely meeting you two, Steve, let me know if you ever want a critical eye on your work, I’ve got a knack for this.”) and doesn’t even bother pretending he’ll pick up the check, which Steve gets, of course, and swats her hand away when she reaches to put in half. She’s exhausted. She thanks him, though, and he runs to the bathroom while she waits outside with Bucky.</p><p>He’s looking at her, unusually intent. She raises an eyebrow.</p><p>“What?” Wanda says.</p><p>Bucky gives her a small smile. “Nothing.”</p><p>“Say it.”</p><p>“I have absolutely nothing to say.”</p><p>She rolls her eyes. “You don’t like him.”</p><p>Bucky scuffs his foot over a crack in the sidewalk. “Does he make you happy?”</p><p>Wanda swallows. He doesn’t make her sad, and he doesn’t hurt her, and those are all she can hope for. “Yeah.”</p><p>“Well,” Bucky says, “then I like him.” He smiles at her. She smiles back. Then, unable to resist, apparently, he adds, “I’m sure I’ll be seeing more of him when Steve gets his opinion on his literally award winning paintings.”</p><p>Wanda blushes. “He was trying to be nice,” she defends him, half-heartedly. Bucky smirks anyway. “I’m so sorry,” she adds, cheeks hot, “I don’t know what the fuck—I told him not to—to bring that up, he just fucking—thought he was being supportive, or something.”</p><p>Bucky bites his lip and looks down again. “Yeah, well. Him and everyone else in the world.”</p><p>Then Steve comes out and kisses him on the cheek, and Bucky giggles and wraps both arms around him. When Bucky looks up at him, his eyes go almost incredulous, like he can’t believe how lucky he is, and she knows she and Jarvis don’t look at each other that way but she has come to terms with that. She feels, instead, lucky to get to watch her best friend who has suffered so much be loved so completely and gently. He deserves this, she thinks, more than anyone on Earth.</p><p>***</p><p>“What is wrong with you?” Wanda snarls to him the next day. “I told you fifty fucking times not to mention him!”</p><p>Jarvis looks shocked, like he genuinely had no idea he screwed up. “I was being supportive!” he defends himself, “It’s not like I asked him to talk about it—”</p><p>“You said,” she starts, and takes a breath, “that he was a brilliant hedge fund guy.”</p><p>“He is! Doesn’t mean I think he should be able to get away with whatever he did to Bucky—”</p><p>“What he did,” Wanda spits, “was drug and rape and abuse him.”</p><p>“And that’s awful, but it doesn’t negate the work he’s done financially?”</p><p>“What is <em>wrong</em> with you? Who cares, Jarvis? Who gives a <em>fuck</em> what he did financially? He’s a fucking animal!”</p><p>You’re being dramatic,” Jarvis tells her. “Wanda, I was being <em>nice.</em>”</p><p>They’re standing in his living room, and she has the sudden urge to break the vase that’s resting on the coffee table next to her.</p><p>So furious she’s almost in tears, Wanda hisses, “Don’t you fucking tell me not to be dramatic. I asked you for one <em>fucking</em> thing, which was to not bring up my best friend’s rapist the first time you met him, and you couldn’t even do that.” She’s never yelled at him like this before, and it takes him aback.</p><p>“Okay, Wanda,” he says carefully, alarmed. “Hey. Hey, I’m sorry if it made you mad, okay? I didn’t mean anything by it.”</p><p>Wanda buries her face in her hands, in tears, suddenly. In tears because she doesn’t even like her boyfriend but she’ll never do any better than him and because she’s terrified that in a month, her best friend is going to lose a court case to the billionaire who abused him for seven months and because she’s exhausted and hasn’t eaten enough today and she’s behind on rent and because she misses her family and she can’t even talk to Jarvis about that because she knows he’ll say something stupid and insensitive and she doesn’t want to be disappointed by him again and because she’s jealous of her best friend’s relationship which is possibly the worst thing she’s ever felt because Bucky has earned that kind of love a hundred times over after what he went through and her being anything but elated for him is fucking awful.</p><p>“Baby, come here,” Jarvis says, and wraps his arms around her, and she leans into his chest because she’s too tired not to.</p><p>***</p><p>Sam comes into her cafe later that day, because the world loves to laugh at people. </p><p>She sees him before he sees her, and tries, for a moment, to fix her hair before giving it up. He has his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, and when he sees her he grins and tilts his chin up a bit, and she smiles back.</p><p>“I totally forgot you worked here,” he tells her.</p><p>She smiles, too tired to come back with anything clever, and says, “Coffee?”</p><p>“Black, please?” Sam says. She pours it for him. When he takes it, their hands brush.</p><p>“You okay?” Sam asks her. She blinks.</p><p>“Yeah,” she says, a moment late. He frowns. “It’s whatever, it’s nothing.”</p><p>“Hey,” Sam says, and leans over the counter a little. “It’s not nothing if you’re upset.”</p><p>A weak rush of relief pushes through her. She runs a hand through her hair. “Thanks,” she tells him, meaning it.</p><p>“Wanna talk about it?” Sam asks her.</p><p>She laughs tiredly. “Nah, I’m sure you’ve got stuff to do.”</p><p>“Not really, actually,” Sam says, “I was gonna go home and think about all the laundry I have to do and not do it.”</p><p>She laughs again. “You don’t wanna hear me complain about my boyfriend,” she tells him, turning away to rinse the espresso filter.</p><p>He sips his coffee. “Sure, I do,” he tells her. “That’s what I’m trying to do for a living, anyway.”</p><p>She gives him a weary, skeptical smile. “Seriously?”</p><p>He grins. “Lay it on me.”</p><p>She lets him behind the counter and pulls a stool out for him, and talks, for a few minutes, about the night before, about the fight she and Jarvis had two hours ago, about him telling her not to be dramatic and his half apology, and then, when she can’t stop herself, about her apathy about her relationship and the way she’d watched Bucky and Steve last night and couldn’t find a fraction of that in the way she and Jarvis interacted, and Sam just listens and nods.</p><p>“Sorry,” she says, in the end, “Jesus, I’m so sorry to just dump that on you—”</p><p>“Don’t be sorry, Wanda,” Sam tells her, sounding so sincere. “That’s a lot. Being invalidated by the person who you’re supposed to be able to trust is so upsetting.”</p><p>She nods, biting her lip. “He’s just… he doesn’t mean to be like that, but he’s not sensitive to other people the way—as much as I want him to be.”</p><p>Sam sips his coffee, which she has refilled once already, and replies, “I’m sure he means well. But you shouldn’t have to feel like you’re making excuses for him all the time. It’s not fair to you.”</p><p>She scrubs a hand down her face. “Thanks for listening,” she tells him.</p><p>“Of course,” Sam replies. He looks like he might add something, and then her phone buzzes beside her and she glances down to see Jarvis’s name, and when she looks up at Sam, he gives her an understanding little smile, and she bites her lip and picks up.</p><p>*** </p><p>Three weeks later, she and Jarvis break up.</p><p>Unbelievably, he dumps her. He’s on a trip to Silicon Valley with some college friends, one of whom just got a job at Apple and is showing them all around. He calls her his third day there, while she’s home washing dishes, and asks if she has a moment.</p><p>“Wanda,” he says, careful and regrettable, “being here, with these people who really know my deepest self, is making me realize that our relationship just isn’t… optimal. I think we need to end things.”</p><p>For a moment, she just stares and the racing water, too hot on her skin, and blinks. “You’re breaking up with me?” She repeats, appalled. “Over the fucking phone?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m sorry, Wanda,” he says. “To be honest, I sometimes feel like I’m not your top priority. And being in California has really opened my eyes to the real world. I just think we aren’t compatible.”</p><p>She stares blankly forward, astonished. Then, she snaps, “Fuck you. I can’t stand you, anyway. You met my best friend and brought up his rapist. Who the fuck does that?”</p><p>“You’re still mad about that?” Jarvis blanches.</p><p>Wanda rakes a hand through her hair. “Have fun in fucking Silicon Valley, Jarvis. I hope you’re enjoying the real world.”</p><p>She hangs up and stands there, hands still soaked, so stunned she doesn’t even cry yet. When she snaps out of it, her first instinct is to call Bucky, but almost as quickly, she realizes that in five days he has to testify and he’s probably practicing for that and this is not the kind of thing he needs to be hearing about right now, so before she can think about it she calls Natasha.</p><p>“Wanda?”</p><p>“Hi,” she says, and feels pathetic. “Um. This is weird, sorry—”</p><p>“You’re all good,” Nat says, “what’s up?”</p><p>She bites her lip. “I just got dumped,” she says, “and, um. I’d usually call Bucky, but, obviously, I’m not gonna do that this week—”</p><p>“Babe,” Natasha says sadly. “Say no more. What do you need?”</p><p>She chokes out a sob. “To get drunk?”</p><p>“I’m texting you the address of my favorite bar,” Nat says, “meet you there at seven?”</p><p>Seven gives her enough time to cry at home, then get on the subway and meet her at the tiny, hole-in-the-wall bar she chose. Natasha hugs her for a while, and she cries all over again, and when they sit down she turns to her and squeezes her hand.</p><p>“Okay,” Natasha says, “you’re gonna say all the things you didn’t like about him. Every single one. Even if it’s just that once he was late to a date or sometimes he sneezed too loudly.”</p><p>Wanda chokes out a laugh. “Alright,” she manages. It doesn’t take much thinking about. “He’s pretentious. He thinks he’s qualified to do anything in the world just because he exists. He’s cheap.” Nat leans back, nodding and grinning. “He’s condescending. I went down on him but he never went down on me.”</p><p>“Fuck him,” Nat declares, and gestures for more.</p><p>Wanda takes a breath. “He was controlling, he was insensitive. He wore these stupid fucking scarves that looked terrible on him. His accent is annoying.” She pauses. “Sorry.” Nat snorts and shakes her head. “Every movie he liked was fucking boring and sexist and he still always chose what we watched. He has to play devil’s advocate in every single conversation. His favorite show is goddamn Downton Abbey. He thought he could rap. His friends were all boring. When he met Bucky, I told him a hundred times not to bring up Pierce and then he fucking did it anyway.” Nat makes a disgusted noise. “He’s the kind of person who thanks the police when he sees them. Do you know how embarrassing it is to walk around with someone like that?”</p><p>Natasha chokes on her gin and tonic laughing. “God, are you sure he broke up with you?”</p><p>Wanda scrubs both hands down her face and sighs. “God. I didn’t even like him that much, I just—I don’t even know. It was easier to date him than to think about breaking up with him.” He was the first serious relationship she had, ever. “God, he’s such an idiot. He told Steve if he ever wanted advice with art, he had a ‘good eye.’ Steve Rogers.”</p><p>Natasha laughs so hard when she looks up, there are tears in her eyes, and eventually, Wanda dissolves into laughter too, and it takes them a full minute to gather themselves.</p><p>“Fuck that guy, Wanda,” Natasha says, when she gets her breath back. “He didn’t deserve anything about you.”</p><p>She smiles and leans her head against her hand. “I just… to be honest, I was shocked I even got him. I don’t see how I’m gonna get anyone better.” She’s drunk, or else she wouldn’t be saying this.</p><p>Nat sets her drink down so hard Wanda jumps. “Hey,” Nat says, placing a hand clumsily on her shoulder. “Do you know how wrong you are? You’re fucking amazing, Maximoff. Any guy on Earth would be so goddamn lucky to have you, you hear me?”</p><p>She thinks she’s tearing up, so she hugs her instead of responding.</p><p>***</p><p>“Jarvis and I broke up,” she tells Scott a few hours later, stumbling inside, tipsy.</p><p>He looks up. “Thank god,” he says. Then, clearing his throat, “I mean, oh, Wanda, are you okay?”</p><p>Wanda laughs and closes her eyes, sinking next to him on the couch. “Yeah. No. I don’t fucking know.”</p><p>“He sucked,” Scott tells her, “if that’s any consolation.”</p><p>“Did everyone think that?” Wanda asks him weakly.</p><p>“Yeah. I can show you my texts with Bucky talking about how much he sucks.”</p><p>She laughs tiredly. “I feel so shitty,” she tells him, and leans her head on his shoulder. Scott hugs her from the side and sighs.</p><p>“Breakups are the fucking worst. I’m sorry,” he says.</p><p>“Thanks,” she answers, and shuts her eyes.</p><p>“You tell Bucky?”</p><p>She shakes his head. “I figured I’d wait ‘till the trial’s done.” Scott hums in understanding.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he says, “you deserve better than that smug little asshole, though.” He pauses. “I could drain his bank account, if that’d make you feel better.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Wanda tells him. “Maybe.”</p><p>He hugs her again, and she leans into him and shuts her eyes and tries to pretend she isn’t irrationally heartbroken.</p><p>***</p><p>The last day of the trial, they see each other, and she fights with him for the first time. It is also the night that Steve solidifies himself in her mind as worthy of Bucky. She gets to Steve and Bucky’s and Sam, Natasha, and Peggy are standing at the in the kitchen talking agitatedly over each other, voices desperate, and when they spot her, everyone goes silent.</p><p>“Everything okay?” Wanda says carefully, although it is clearly not. Natasha pinches the bridge of her nose. “What’s going on?” Wanda adds sharply.</p><p>Sam slumps into a chair. “Steve thinks Pierce kidnapped Bucky.”</p><p>She thinks he’s joking, and huffs out a halfhearted laugh. Then, upon realizing he’s serious, she hisses, “<em>What?</em>”</p><p>Peggy looks pale. “Bucky was meant to get home first to let us in. He never did, and it freaked Steve out, and he went down to—to check and, ah. The doorman said, um. That he came in and left with an older blonde guy.”</p><p>Wanda feels suddenly very faint. “Oh, my god,” she says, and closes her eyes. “Jesus fucking <em>Christ</em>.”</p><p>“Steve’s going after him right now,” Natasha adds hoarsely. </p><p>None of this is quite processing. Wanda presses her face into her hands and says,  “Tell me you called the cops.”</p><p>“And told them what?” Sam says, voice choked.</p><p>She whirls around at him. “Tell them that Bucky got kidnapped by his fucking rapist and Steve’s gonna get himself killed trying to find them!” she snarls. “Do I need to fucking spell this out?”</p><p>“We don’t know where he lives,” Sam snaps back, agitated. “We can’t just send them nowhere—”</p><p>“You think the fucking cops don’t have his address? Really?”</p><p>“You think we should call 911 and tell them Steve is going to go kill a man right now?”</p><p>“Jesus, I’ll do it myself!” Wanda half-screams. “You’re insane, and you’re wasting time right now. He’s gonna kill them.”</p><p>“His fucking phone,” Natasha intervenes weakly. “See if he has the number of the detective.”</p><p>“I don’t know her name,” Sam snaps back.</p><p>Wanda realizes she’s sunk into a seat. “His wallet,” she whispers. “Check for a card.” Panic has sucked everything from her, abruptly and terribly. She feels sick.</p><p>Peggy digs through Steve’s wallet for a moment and, hand shaking a little, pulls out a card. “Carol Danvers,” she says, and shoves it at Sam, “call her.”</p><p>So Sam does, and Wanda realizes, for the first time, how panicked he is. He looks on the verge of tears, grinding his teeth as he waits for her to pick up. They all watch him, paralyzed.</p><p>“Um,” Sam says weakly, jerking up when she answers. “Hi, yeah, detective? My name’s Sam Wilson.”</p><p>“She doesn’t fucking care,” Nat snaps. Sam ignores her, listening, instead, to Danvers.</p><p>“Um. Yeah, sorry. You–you know my friends, uh, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes? The Pierce case?” Another pause. “Okay. Look, this might be nothing, but, uh, it might be… anyway. I dug your business card out of Steve’s wallet, um–he’s going to Pierce’s house right now.” Sam swallows hard. “He’s convinced Pierce kidnapped Bucky and is gonna…” He squeezes his eyes shut. So does Wanda. “Look, like I said, he might be wrong, but he’s really freaked out and he left a little while ago, is there anyway you could… I don’t know, have someone go over there?”</p><p>Danvers says something, and Sam relaxes visibly. “Thank you, detective,” he says weakly, and, when she hangs up, lifts his head and says, “She’s going over there.”</p><p>So they wait. It’s probably no more than twenty-five minutes, but it is agonizing all the same. They don’t say anything the whole time; the fear in the air is sharp and hard as crystal, fear that rings almost delirious.</p><p>Wanda remembers the hospital room where her brother was declared dead. Before, when there had been a chance he might make it, she had told herself, again and again and again, that he would, made it an inevitability, because if he did not, then she would be alone, and her life would end here if she had to be alone. When they told her, she’d stood, and immediately collapsed.</p><p>It is the same now, this feverish refusal to believe the thing that’s happening before them, the fear that is too great to acknowledge. She knows she should call Scott, but somehow, repeating this to a person outside of this room feels like it will curse them and Alexander Pierce will slit Bucky’s throat or whatever the fuck he wants to do. He’ll be fine, she repeats to herself, they will both be fine.</p><p>At some point, she or Sam must have reached over and taken one another’s hand, because when she looks down, their fingers are locked together. He looks so stressed she can’t tell if he registered either.</p><p>His phone rings, eventually. Wanda closes her eyes, dread suddenly suffocating her.</p><p>Danvers sounds grim. “Something’s happened,” she says, and Wanda knows. For a brief, horrible moment, all four of them go still, all of the air extracted from the room.</p><p>Then she says, “Bucky and Steve are okay, but they might need someone to meet them at a hospital or police station. Is there any family—”</p><p>“No,” Sam says, jumping to his feet. He looks like he might cry with relief. “No, I’ll come. Where—where are you?”</p><p>“Twenty-fourth and fifth,” Danvers says, “but don’t come here, we’ll let you know—”</p><p>Sam ignores this, and so do the rest of them. Instead, they get a taxi over there, murmuring weak, meaningless words of relief and fear and guilt to one another. </p><p>It is a terrible, terrible scene, accentuated by the ambulances and the cop cars and the blood-tinged lighting getting thrown over buildings, and Wanda finds them first. She grabs Sam’s arm when she does, choking out, “There,” and all three of them turn to look.</p><p>They’re together, sitting in the back of some ambulance, fitted against each other with a desperation that makes Wanda bite her lip. Bucky looks half dead in Steve’s arms, his body limp and small, face buried in Steve’s shoulder. Steve is looking forward, eyes bleak and gaunt and focused on nothing. When he sees them he blinks and tries to convey something, relief or sorrow or gratitude, but he doesn’t move from Bucky’s side to go see them, and Wanda is grateful for that.</p><p>“You can’t be here,” one of the cops says to them, when they try to walk over, “this is a crime scene—“</p><p>“Detective Danvers?” Sam manages, glancing at her badge. The woman raises her eyebrows. “We’re—I’m Sam, we, uh, we’re all friends of theirs—”</p><p>Danvers sighs, softening a little. “Bucky and Steve are fine,” she tells them, “but we really can’t have anyone who isn’t involved—”</p><p>Then they’re all arguing in urgent, desperate tones, flustered hands moving through the air, not even hearing the shit they’re saying, and Danvers purses her lips and sighs. She glances back at Steve, who nods, and turns, resigned, back to them.</p><p>“Ten minutes,” Danvers says finally, stepping out of the way. “They aren’t seriously hurt, but be careful.” She gives them a tiny, sad smile before they go.</p><p>***</p><p>“Wanda,” Sam says to her later, very quietly.</p><p>She turns, and he’s crossing his arms over his chest.</p><p>“I’m sorry. About yelling earlier. I just… I was scared.”</p><p>She swallows. “Me, too.”</p><p>They both glance vaguely back towards the bedroom, where Steve and Bucky are alone, shell-shocked and beaten. There’s nothing they can say, not one thing that will make this acceptable, so Wanda scrubs a hand down her face.</p><p>“Should we check on them?” Sam asks quietly.</p><p>She thinks about this, then says, “I think we should let them be.”</p><p>He nods. Gazing down, his face hardens. “Their fucking parents should be here, taking care of them. They shouldn’t be alone, they shouldn’t need us.”</p><p>Wanda huffs out an exhausted laugh. “If their parents were here, none of this would be happening.” </p><p>Sam swallows. “They’re okay,” he says, like he’s reminding himself.</p><p>“They are,” Wanda repeats. Vaguely, she can’t believe this week began with her getting dumped.</p><p>Sam shifts his weight. “You take the guest room.”</p><p>“You sure? You can have it—”</p><p>He shakes his head, casting her an exhausted smile. “Steve’s couch is more comfortable than my bed, anyway.”</p><p>She forces a laugh. “Goodnight, Sam,” she says softly.</p><p>“‘Night, Wanda.”</p><p>***</p><p>That summer is a time, Wanda thinks, for transformation. She leaves the cafe in order to work with Scott’s girlfriend in her dress shop in the West Village, an offer that makes her chest ache with nostalgia when Maggie asks her to because when she was little and didn’t know her life would be ripped from under her at fourteen, she had wanted to be a designer and Scott knew that, and it is her first job that she doesn’t just tolerate but enjoys. </p><p>She and Bucky spend a lot of time together that summer, compensating, she guesses, for the lack of time spent together while the trial amped up to its catastrophic conclusion. They do these dumb little cooking classes that they both adore, and he comes to see her at the boutique and she helps him and Steve unpack into their gorgeous new apartment and hurdles into it when she hears they got a dog. She doesn’t tell Bucky about the breakup until after he gets back from Spain. He and Steve seem, she thinks, she hopes, a little more solid, a little steadier on their feet than they had before they left. When she does tell him, he hugs her, and apologizes, and then says, “Is it too early for me to say that Jarvis didn’t deserve even a billionth of a fraction of your attention?”</p><p>She works at getting over it. Less at getting over him, since, as Bucky pointed out, he was so dull of a person that there is very little to get over and she doesn’t miss him, but at getting over the idea that she was rejected even by him, that she doesn’t possess what one needs to be loved completely. She tries to be okay with this. She has never—and still doesn’t—believe that romantic relationships are the be all, end all of connection; besides her family, Bucky and Scott are the two people she has ever loved most in the world, people who she knows she can depend on at any time, for anything, people who know the ugliest things about her and love her all the same.</p><p>She isn’t miserable or lonely. She has more and closer friends than she ever has in her life; Scott and Bucky, and Peter and Gamora, but now, Nat and Peggy, whose apartment she finds herself in at least once a week, unloading everything that bothers them around an order of Thai food, Sam, who now texts her every cup of coffee he drinks and complains that she makes it better. Even Steve has become one of her best friends, Steve, who she threatened to murder six months ago if he put a hand on Bucky, Steve who she argues with about romcoms and who, when they were out once, waiting for Bucky to get dinner, watched a guy walk by her, say something appalling, and grabbed his shoulder, snapped, “What the fuck?” and made him apologize.</p><p>She also, however, spends a lot of her free time with Bucky and Steve and Peggy and Nat and Sam, and none of them make it easy to pretend she wouldn’t like to be in a relationship.</p><p>She and the rest of them mock Bucky and Steve relentlessly for it, but there is an almost aching tenderness in the way they treat each other that floods Wanda with equal relief and jealousy. The six of them, one night, go to Rockaway beach and sit around a picnic blanket for several lazy, lovely hours, dispersing to dive through waves or toss a frisbee or stroll aimlessly, and when it gets dark, they sit quietly in the pleasant chill drinking San Pellegrino and listening to the waves. Bucky is leaning against Steve, and after some time, his head lolls sleepily onto Steve’s shoulder, and she watches Steve glance down, his face softening into something that puts adoration to shame, and shift so Bucky can lean more comfortably, before kissing his forehead, and a few minutes later, when Bucky shivers, she watches him maneuver out of his sweatshirt to tug it over Bucky’s shoulders. He does it so thoughtlessly, so effortlessly it is almost as if Bucky’s discomfort tethered to his own, as if there is simply no solution but to remedy it. Another night, she watches Bucky watch Steve speak about nothing in particular, laughing a little as he does, one hand moving carefully through the air and the other moving in circles over Bucky’s shoulder, his face alight with joy, like he is being given the privilege of hearing something so unimaginably groundbreaking and to look away would be unthinkable. She is both thrilled and envious of them.</p><p>Natasha and Peggy don’t quite broadcast their romance the way Steve and Bucky do, but it’s there and it’s lovely. A gentle hand on one another’s back as they cook dinner, a mug of coffee with just the right amount of milk brought over without even needing to ask for it, a spot of red lipstick still faint on Natasha’s cheek left over from a goodbye kiss in the morning. Being surrounded by romantic love is not the ideal breakup aftermath, no matter how much she adores the people.</p><p>And there is Sam. Sam, with his endless empathy and his warm dark eyes and his terrible taste in music but surprisingly beautiful singing voice, Sam who laughs with his whole body, face lilting with such beautiful joy it’s almost childlike, Sam who always walks her home from the subway when they head uptown from Brooklyn together even though it means he has to swipe back in, just because she told him she often gets catcalled alone, Sam who Wanda is probably a little bit in love with but to admit that opens all sorts of doors she isn’t ready for.</p><p>She’s with Bucky one night in his new place. It’s just the two of them; Steve and Sam are out somewhere, so Bucky called her and told her to come over because, she knows, he still gets nervous being alone at night sometimes. They’re baking cookies—actual ones, not Pillsbury—and he’s letting her talk about Jarvis without making her feel like she’s being dramatic.        </p><p>“I’m sorry, babe,” Bucky tells her, meaning it, bending down to give Penny a rub. “Breakups are the fucking worst.”</p><p>She gives him a wry little smirk. “Your one experience with a breakup was worse than this,” she tells him, and he snorts.</p><p>“Do you miss him?” Bucky asks her.</p><p>She shakes her head. “I just still feel like an idiot, you know? It’s humiliating.”</p><p>“It’s not humiliating, Wanda,” Bucky says, cocking his head. “No one else is looking at it like that, I promise.” </p><p>“I don’t know who else is gonna love me,” Wanda tells him quietly. “I think that when you’re me, you take what you can get.”</p><p>Bucky grabs her lightly by the arm. “Wanda,” he says, and sounds genuinely upset. “How can you even think that about yourself?”</p><p>There is a comment about irony to be made here, but she doesn’t have it in her. She shrugs and purses her lips.</p><p>“You’re like, objectively, the greatest person in the world,” Bucky says. “You know that, right?” She rolls her eyes and smiles wearily. “Everyone you let into your life is so goddamn lucky to know you. Including any and all future boyfriends. None of them are gonna deserve you.”</p><p>“Sure, Buck,” she says, cheeks hot. </p><p>“You were—you were the first person in that part of my life who was—who treated me like a human,” Bucky tells her quietly. She looks up, softening. “You’re an extraordinary person. Everyone who knows you knows that.”</p><p>She doesn’t answer. Instead, she reaches over and squeezes his hand, then lays her head on his shoulder for a beat, swallowing.</p><p>“Anyway,” Wanda says, with a hard breath, “how’s your relationship going?” She likes hearing Bucky talk about Steve. She’s still not entirely accustomed to this new happy version of Bucky, but now that she’s convinced it isn’t too good to be true, she loves watching him get better.</p><p>Bucky grins sheepishly. “You know. Great.”</p><p>She laughs. Bucky glances down, something falling in his expression.</p><p>“Do you think I should have sex with him?” Bucky blurts out, worried.</p><p>She glances at him, surprised. “Do you want to?”</p><p>He pauses, then, looking down, shakes his head. “But I should,” he whispers. “And I should want to.”</p><p>Wanda bites her lip. “No,” she says quietly, “you should do what you’re comfortable with.”</p><p>Buck won’t look up from his hands. “But I—but that’s what people in relationships do,” he says, “and we’ve been back together for almost a year, and—and we’ve had sex before, and, um, I slept with—with plenty of guys when I didn’t want to before and just—I could do it, I could pretend so I could give him that—”</p><p>“Buck,” Wanda says gently, wincing, “I promise you, Steve would rather wait on sex than have you pretend you want to when you don’t.”</p><p>Bucky’s mouth twists into a troubled little frown.</p><p>“He isn’t… he isn’t making you feel like…?”</p><p>“God, no,” Bucky assures her. “He’d never. That’s, um, why I think I’m just… I think I’m being selfish.”</p><p>Wanda bites her lip and studies him. “Bucky, you aren’t being selfish,” she tells him. “This stuff takes time.” She pauses. “Have you talked to your therapist about this?”</p><p>Bucky runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he says, “she’s, uh, told me that same thing, you know. Everyone has. I just… I still, um, get scared, sometimes, that he’ll leave me if I don’t.” Wanda swallows. “Even though I know how stupid that is, and how good Steve is, and that—that we’re happy, we’re really happy. I just… it’s still hard, even now.”</p><p>“That makes sense,” Wanda says quietly, “I mean, you’ve been with Steve for a year and you were… you were being told those things for four years. It takes time, and you’re already doing so good.” Bucky smiles weakly. “And by the way, Steve wouldn’t leave you if his life depended on it. He loves you so much.”</p><p>Later, when she has left with a tupperware of cookies and stopped, briefly, at CVS for shampoo, she turns in her path at the sound of her name. When she looks behind her, Sam is laughing and waving at her, and she grins and waits for him.</p><p>“Fancy seeing you here,” Sam says, waving a hand vaguely. “Were you just with Bucky?”</p><p>“Yeah,” she laughs, “you were with Steve?”</p><p>“Yeah.” He smiles at her; a shot of electricity races down her spine. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”</p><p>She shrugs. “How are you?”</p><p>“Good,” Sam says vaguely, and smiles again; she prays the flush in her cheeks isn’t obvious. “You heading uptown? We can—”</p><p>“Would you wanna grab some food?” Wanda asks suddenly. Sam blinks, then smiles, his head cocked a little to the side, and nods.</p><p>“There’s a little diner, like, right here?” he suggests, and she nods.</p><p>The diner is a tiny, twenty-four hour, poorly lit restaurant populated with drunk high school students. They laugh and nestle into a booth. It is popular for its donuts, so they each get one, and share some fries, and she gets black coffee and Sam gets hot chocolate.</p><p>They talk for a long time. They discuss jobs (he has a counselor position in a psychiatric ward, and he tells her stories that are fascinating and impressive and unbelievable and still doesn’t make her feel condescended to when he asks her questions about the boutique). They talk about Steve and Bucky and Natasha and Peggy and Scott and Sam’s family and movies they’ve seen and how bizarre it is that their friends are minor celebrities. Sam keeps turning his mug in circles, and she fights the urge to reach over and still his hand. She’s no better, sweeping her hair back every ten seconds. At some point, the diner starts playing fucking Mamma Mia, and they laugh so hard that the booth of teenagers beside them looks over. Eventually, she glances at her phone and says, “Oh, my god, it’s one,” and he’s surprised too, and they split the bill and walk to the subway. It’s cold, and their shoulders brush.</p><p>They stand there, on the Seventh Avenue subway platform, closer than they have to. Sam keeps looking at her and she keeps blushing and looking down, half praying the train won’t arrive so she can keep standing here with him, and then he clears his throat and she looks up.</p><p>“Wanda,” he starts, “I, um. I really like you, and, uh, I was wondering if you wanted to<br/>
do this again? Officially?”</p><p>She blinks, then laughs. “Yeah, Sam. I really like you, too.” Her heart ricochets itself into her throat. She feels sixteen, she feels high and giddy.</p><p>He looks surprised, somehow. “Seriously?”</p><p>Wanda laughs again, pursing her lips against grinning too absurdly. Then she leans in and kisses him, very gently, her arms wound around his neck, on tiptoes. He fits his arms around his waist and pulls her in, kissing back slowly and breathlessly. He’s warm, his lips and body soft and sure, and he tastes like hot chocolate and she kisses him deeper, breathing into it, and she thinks vaguely that Bucky is gonna lose his mind when she tells him about this and that makes her laugh, and Sam laughs too, and then they break apart and look at one another and then he is kissing her again and her body comes alive, light twirling through her chest. </p><p>Their train arrives, and they miss it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>well hello everyone seven months later i have no excuse i just didnt know how to finish this for a while but here it is at 3pm on a tuesday</p><p>some things:</p><p>there's talk of past sexual abuse in this, if you've read this far in the series you're probably prepared for that but i'm just telling you anyway</p><p>there is also talk of past attempted suicide and reference to a past abortion, plz take care of yourselves and be safe</p><p>not a trigger warning but for some reference on the timeline of this in relationship to the main story: it starts around chapter 3 of eitd and there are a lot of references to things that happen in that fic that you may recognize, and then towards the end it kind of passes that and takes place after the end of eitd very briefly although there are no major events for s and b so it probably doesn't matter</p><p>this is dedicated to henry who texted me about wanda and sam 2 weeks ago and motivated me to write this i love u !!!</p><p>ok! enjoy! love you all</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Three weeks later, Wanda wakes up late. She isn’t working today and neither is Sam, and he has stayed the night and as she shakes herself out of sleep, she realizes Sam is already up and has set a tray of food down beside her, sliced peaches over pancakes, coffee with almond milk.</p><p>“That for me?” Wanda asks him, still sluggish with exhaustion. She blinks against the pale morning light and sweeps her hair to the side, smiling drowsily.</p><p>“Oh, this?” Sam says. “No, sorry, I think I left some cereal in there for you…”</p><p>She reaches across the bed and swats him. Laughing, he eases himself back onto the bed and kisses her, lazy and happy, and she sits up and smiles at him.</p><p>“Thanks,” she tells him, grabbing for a knife. “You didn’t have to do that.”</p><p>“I know,” he says.</p><p>Dating Sam is nothing like dating Jarvis. Dating Sam is nothing like anything. </p><p>They got off the train that evening together at Wanda’s stop. “Scott’s home,” she said to him, regretfully. Sam nodded.</p><p>“That’s alright,” he said, “I have to get up early tomorrow, anyway.” They stood across from each other, suddenly shy. Sam, finally, said, “I’m around tomorrow evening, though.”</p><p>“Me too,” Wanda said. Then she kissed his cheek, tentative, and when his face lit up with something that could put comets to shame, she kissed his mouth again. “It’s a date.”</p><p>That night, they got tacos and ate them in Central Park, on top of the giant rocks. Wanda had climbed them with her brother when they were small, anxious yells from her mother sounding faint below, warning them to be careful, her stuffed rabbit that still sits in her windowsill tucked under her chin. She thought about saying this, but did not. Instead, they talked about how long they had liked one another.</p><p>“The second I saw you.”</p><p>“Liar.”</p><p>“No, swear to god!”</p><p>“Yeah, right.”</p><p>“I’m serious! We were in the elevator, remember, and I thought you were so damn pretty.” Wanda smiled despite herself. Then, reluctant, she butted her forehead against his shoulder, teasing and endeared. “You were wearing those light blue pom-pom earrings and they were the same color as your sweater, remember? And that was before I knew you color-coded your earrings or hat or scarves to whatever else you were wearing, and you had your card for Bucky taped to the outside of your gift, and you’d written his name in this really pretty calligraphy.” The fact that she existed in his memory like this made Wanda feel dazzling and exposed, like being under a spotlight on some grand opera stage. “And also, that night, you told this story about those twelve-year-olds who came into your coffee shop and tried to flirt with you, and you were just so funny. And I was gonna ask you out, but then you mentioned Jarvis.” She could not find anything to say that would not end in humiliation, so she kissed his cheek. “C’mon, your turn to be embarrassing.”</p><p>“Hm.” She pretended to think about this. “Okay. When we did karaoke.”</p><p>“Aw, that’s so cliche.”</p><p>“Excuse me?”</p><p>“Like, if we were a romcom, that would be the scene where it went to slow motion and the noise faded out.”</p><p>“You just said it was when you first saw me!”</p><p> </p><p>“Okay, fine! Touché.”</p><p>Wanda shook her head, mock appalled. “You made me laugh so much that night. You were so… not earnest, exactly, but like… so many guys are so jaded, and everything they do has to be wrapped in ten layers of irony. But you asked me to do karaoke with you, and we bought those bright pink drinks, and you sang ABBA and you had no self-consciousness about it. And I thought it was rare to see anyone let themselves light up like that, with no need to pretend it’s anything but fun.”</p><p>Sam was smiling then, no teasing in it. “I couldn’t believe you agreed to hang out with me in a karaoke bar,” he replied.</p><p>“No, that was maybe the best date anyone’s ever taken me on, seriously.”</p><p>They mulled around this for a bit, laughing, until Sam asked, “Did you grow up in New York?” She knew this conversation was coming, but she still felt the faint wave of distress that it was here.</p><p>“Yeah,” she said.</p><p>“Your family still here?”</p><p>She shook her head. Sam waited, expectant. Wanda closed her eyes, bit the inside of her cheek, counted to ten. </p><p>“When I was fourteen,” she said quietly, “we were driving, and, um. It was really icy.” She swallowed hard. “None of them made it.”</p><p>Sam took a breath. Between them, the pH of the air seemed to have changed, colder and stiffer than it had been before. “Oh, Wanda. I’m—I’m so, so sorry.”</p><p>She pushed her rice from one side of its container to the other. “Thanks. It—it was a long time ago.”</p><p>“Still,” Sam whispered. “I—that’s so awful, Wanda.”</p><p>“Yeah,” she said blankly, because there was nothing else to be said. “I thought Bucky or Steve might’ve told you,” she added quietly.</p><p>“No,” he whispered. She nodded. “God, Wanda. I’m so sorry.”</p><p>She shrugged, the movement stilted and wrong. “It’s okay. Sorry to kill the mood. Not exactly the first date conversation anyone hopes for.”</p><p>“Thank you for telling me,” Sam said, and he sounded so sincere that Wanda lifted her head to give him a little smile.</p><p>“We don’t have to talk about this,” Wanda added, and was relieved when Sam heard her saying <em>I don’t want to talk about this.</em> He nodded, then asked about how she met Bucky. It always surprises Wanda how willing to not talk about this subject people are.</p><p>She does not tell anyone, not Bucky or Natasha, not even Scott, who arguably would be the easiest to talk to about it since he knows Sam the least. She is afraid of letting on how happy she is, of tipping the universe off so that they rush to correct it. This, she thinks, is an anomaly. Easier, then, to skip the humiliation of its inevitable ending, to minimize the awkwardness within their friend group when whatever is going on ends. But also, there is something exciting about keeping a secret romance, a juvenile thrill that comes over both of them when they are sitting with their friends who suspect nothing, reveling in the knowledge that they will leave separately and end the night together. They have not discussed not telling their friends, probably because that implies a discussion about the limits or lack of limits in the relationship that it is still too soon for.</p><p>And there’s sex. Really fucking good sex that leaves them both spent and grinning ridiculously, limbs tangled up in sheets, warm, heavy breathing alternating in the dark. Wanda has slept with six other guys in her life. There was Jarvis, who was as average and underwhelming in the bedroom as he was in every other aspect of their relationship. There were two one night stands at bars, who she slept with to prove to herself she could still have sex for her rather than whatever commodity it had become at the club, both of them harmless and sweet and unthreatening and unremarkable. There were guys who waited for her after a shift and offered her money for a night, and when they went over five hundred, which three of them did, she did it, pursed her lips and closed her eyes and then deposited their cash and shoved them to the back of her mind. There was her sophomore year English teacher, who gave her As on essays she didn’t turn in and brought her lunch sometimes because, he told her, he lost his family as a teenager and understood. Then one day, he asked her to stay after school.</p><p>She told Bucky that one night, half-laughed it bitterly off, and he sat up, horrified, and said, “Wanda, that was rape,” and at twenty-two years old, she knows that, but it had been a time in her life when not one adult was offering her a shred of love or care and she was so paralyzed by grief anyway that she had let it happen, not said a word, and went home to someone else’s family and not told them. There had been a comment about irony to be made, but she hadn’t had it in her. She is angry about it when she thinks of it now, white hot, shivering disgust, how could someone have done that to a child, to a sixteen-year-old who just lost her entire family, he should be skinned alive. She told Scott, too. A week after that, the guy was arrested for possession of child porn.</p><p>“I didn’t put anything new there,” Scott told her, disgusted. “Just pointed the police towards it.”</p><p>“But you would’ve,” she replied.</p><p>“No,” he said, “I would’ve found his address, brought a couple friends to his house and kicked his ass.”</p><p>She has fluctuated in her comfort with sex. She didn’t sleep with anyone between fifteen and eighteen, and then, utterly alone in the world and determined to prove to herself that she was not a victim, she had slept with a twenty-two year old college student who worked at the bagel store she sometimes got her breakfast at, who used to charge her less than what she owed until he asked for her number. He was polite and awkward, and he asked her if it felt good the entire time and it didn’t, but she didn’t care because she was just glad he was doing it with her permission. Neither of them ever called the other again and she settled for bagels four blocks away from the room she was living in.</p><p>No one has ever been violent with her. It has never been the way it was for Bucky. Men have grabbed her, have jeered at her and terrified her to the point of tears, but no one has ever hit her or choked her or tied her up. Even Mr. Houghton had been slow, had said, <em>tell me if it hurts, Wanda, my god, you’re beautiful</em> and afterwards, when he saw she was crying, handed her a tissue and candy bar from his desk and said, <em>it’s okay, honey, no need for that.</em> When she has nightmares, they are mostly about her parents and brother, but occasionally she will be thrust awake thinking of his voice or the smell of his classroom and have to stumble into the bathroom and throw up.</p><p>By the time she started dating and sleeping with Jarvis, she convinced herself she was fine with it all. She didn’t mind sex with him; it was part of it, uninspiring but fine, occasionally decent if she was willing to put in enough effort to make it good for herself. But it was never terrifying or disgusting, and that, she is convinced, means she has reached a healthy relationship to sex.</p><p>She has never laughed with anyone during sex, and she does now. The first time she slept with Sam was their fourth date, in Wanda’s empty apartment where they cooked pasta and ate in the light of cheap candles that snuffed out every five minutes, and Wanda had kissed him while they’d been doing dishes and they’d ended up in the bedroom and he kissed her neck all the way down her stomach and between her legs and <em>god, fuck,</em> that had been something no one had ever done for her and it made her wonder why she allowed herself to sleep with these dreary, pathetic men who barely lasted five minutes when, for the first time, she got the passion and thrill and hunger that surrounded sex. </p><p>After that, she said something to him like, “Jesus Christ, Wilson,” and he laughed and she smiled and they lay there for ten, fifteen minutes in hazy, electric contentment and then she sat up and fumbled in her nightstand for a condom and smirked at him and they were kissing again, hands warm and hungry in the dark, and he had said, “You’re so fuckin’ beautiful, Wanda.” She has been called beautiful by dozens of guys, most of them whom she despised, and she has been called beautiful by Jarvis, who seemed to be saying it because he thought it was the thing he was supposed to say, but she’s never felt it the way she had when Sam said it, and she looked right at him and said, “You’re pretty beautiful yourself,” and he laughed and so did she.</p><p>And he is beautiful, she thinks right now. There is a goodness to Sam, a fierce softness that she has not known in any man she’s loved before. He laughs with no abandon, he holds her with such tenderness that she sometimes forgets that this is a person she has been with for three weeks. He kisses her now, and she is aware that he never kisses like he is asking for something, only offering, and in return she offers him herself, winding her arms around his neck so tightly that some of her hair falls in curtains around his shoulder, and the pancakes sit, forgotten. </p><p>***</p><p>“So,” Sam says to her one evening. They are sitting on her fire escape, eating Chinese food out of the cartons, their legs intertwined. “We going upstate?”</p><p>“Sure seems like it.” Wanda lifts a noodle high and lowers it, gracelessly, so it slips off of her chopsticks and onto her nose. Sam laughs at her, and she kicks him. “It’ll be fun, right?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Sam says. “Her house is crazily nice.”</p><p>“Oh, I bet.”</p><p>It is. Wanda and Sam, both ostensibly single, are told to work out amongst themselves who gets the bigger bedroom. She says to him, mildly, “Flip a coin?” and is pleased with Sam’s slight smirk. That night, after the six of them have chatted and smoked and shared more than Wanda had planned or been prepared to share, she retires happily to the bigger bedroom, takes a long shower that feels like a reset, and texts Sam, <em>So you coming or what?</em> A minute and a half later, he knocks on the door.</p><p>“Hi,” Sam says breathlessly, when she greets him, grinning, in the doorway. Wanda kisses him, the clean, comforting smell of his body wash rising around her, something pepperminty and lovely.</p><p>“Hi.”</p><p>They grin at each other, giddy again in the unnecessary secrecy. “I need some water,” Sam says, and she follows him into the kitchen. She kisses him again, softly, and thinks of melting cotton candy.</p><p>“Everyone asleep?” The house, around them, is dark and quiet, and every shift of her weight sounds enormous. Sam, either less concerned or less aware than her of this, flicks on the brightest light in the kitchen. “You know this is a pretty classic setup for the first murder of a horror movie,” Wanda adds, jerking her head vaguely in reference to the long shadows bouncing off the high ceiling.</p><p>Sam snorts. “Serial killer, or ghost?” The high has almost completely worn off, the room comfortably warm and incandescent. </p><p>“Serial killer ghost.”</p><p>“Spooky. Did I tell you I hate horror movies?”</p><p>“Mhm. We’re still watching <em>The Others</em>, thought. You think Pegs will mind if I take some ice cream?” </p><p>Sam is leaning against the counter now, arms crossed, looking at her with adoration that Wanda convinces herself is a leftover interpretation of the joint she smoked. “Nah.”</p><p>“You want some?”</p><p>“Oh, yes please.” Sam grins lazily at her while she opens four cabinets before coming across bowls. She rolls her eyes at him, fake scowling when he comes up behind her to wrap his arms around her as she digs into unyielding peanut butter ice cream.</p><p>Something solid moves upstairs, not a serial killer or a ghost, but something unmistakable enough that they both hear it. They look up, in unison, but there is only the empty hallway and the imaginary reverberations of someone moving above them.</p><p>“Steve and Bucky are up there,” Sam says. They both peer at the landing for a few more moments, and then, deciding they haven’t been spied on, grin sheepishly at one another and return to the ice cream.</p><p>“Hey,” Sam says softly. “I didn’t—I didn’t know that stuff you said earlier.”</p><p>Wanda’s hands still momentarily; she had hoped, in the fugue of pot and conversation, he would have forgotten. She sweeps her hair back and says, “Oh, um. Yeah. Well, it’s whatever.” She winces internally, wishing she had not admitted earlier that she used to be so bitter that she carried a knife around, bloodthirsty for men who disrespected her, in front of a man she is hoping will stay for a while. “I made it sound dramatic.”</p><p>“No, you didn’t. I’m so sorry that you’ve had those experiences.” The vagueness of it relieves her, a reminder that her baggage is still packed safely away, existing only in abstracts. “If you ever want to, um, tell me anything,” Sam goes on, “I’m always here, okay?”</p><p>Wanda smiles wanly. “Thanks.”</p><p>“I’m serious!” he protests. “I’m your… you know.”</p><p>This is easier, this teasing. She cocks her head. “Do I?”</p><p>“Shut up,” Sam says, and becomes engrossed in putting the ice cream away.</p><p>“If you say therapist, then I will be the serial killer that we’re waiting for.”</p><p>“I would <em>never</em>—”</p><p>“I know,” she promises him, and pushes on tiptoes to kiss the bridge of his nose. “I’m kidding. Eat your ice cream.” Her voice is light, but there’s a finality to the words that she hopes Sam gets. He does.</p><p>They don’t have sex that night. Every time, without fail, that Wanda stayed at Jarvis’s, there would be the whole ordeal of obligatory sex, a ritual they had to go through to make sleeping in the same bed worth it. Once, a week before they broke up, when she told him she had a headache, he had complained for so long that she stood up, put jeans back on, and left.</p><p>She doesn’t know if this is dangerous, twining herself around this man who isn’t even her boyfriend but who she is almost certainly a little in love with. There is an intimacy in it that she has never known, as beautiful and frightening as something like cliff diving.</p><p>“Make sure,” Wanda mumbles, half asleep, “make sure they don’t see you come out of here tomorrow.” The secrecy, by now, has taken on a life of its own, set so far into motion by now that they don’t know how to undo it. She has found she doesn’t really mind.</p><p>“Yeah,” Sam says. “I’m gonna go for a run early. Alright if I set an alarm?”</p><p>She nods, not lifting her head from his chest. Sam kisses her on the forehead, and Wanda falls asleep feeling perfectly adored.</p><p>***</p><p>“Hey, Wanda?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>Sam’s bedroom, a few weeks later. One of the things she appreciates about him is his neatness, his attention to detail. His window is clean, sunlight not speckled by the usual dots of grime that plague window panes in New York City. On his desk, a stack of GRA study books and some framed photos of him and his college friends, him and Steve and Natasha, him and his family, him in a college play. A neat Mason Jar of sleek pens, some notebooks filled with beautiful, geometric notes about psychology. His room smells nice because he has a vanilla diffuser on the side of his bed. She loves this room.</p><p>Sam, disgruntledly handsome in his post-morning sex state, looks suddenly sheepish. “Um. I have a question about… seeing other people.”</p><p>Wanda feels suddenly raw and brittle. “Oh,” she says, very softly.</p><p>“I was wondering how you felt about not doing it?”</p><p>She stares at him, then, annoyed, swats him with his pillow. “Jesus <em>Christ</em>, Sam. You couldn’t have found a better way to phrase that?”</p><p>Sam laughs. “Sorry! I was nervous!”</p><p>Wanda snorts, sits up to pull her hair into a bun, and leans in to kiss his jaw. “I feel good about that.”</p><p>He grins, delighted. She rolls her eyes at him once more and then climbs out of his bed, throws on a tee shirt of his and some jeans, and holds his hand while they walk out to the cheap bagel store on his corner, vaguely aware that they are now in the world as a couple, a change that, really, does not make any difference, but to Wanda feels momentous.</p><p>Dating exclusively, it turns out, changes nothing. She had been worried at first that it might. It has just been so <em>fun</em> with Sam. In every other romantic experience she has had, she’s always felt tethered down by obligation, going to dinner and enduring bland sex and filling conversation with stories about her day that didn’t even interest her because it felt like the right formula. She used to watch Maggie and Scott, fluctuating in their relationship status, lovers to exes to friends several times in a year, bolted together now with an unplanned baby, and she had always thought that that seemed like about what could be hoped for, which depressed her. They never seemed to be exclusive but there were never hard feelings, either; Wanda has been in conversations with Maggie in her apartment and not known if she was talking to Scott’s girlfriend or friend with benefits or acquaintance at the moment, and tried to skirt around any questions that would require her to identify which it was. Privately, she has never thought of them as long term. They love each other, but in Wanda’s opinion, they love each other as best friends who are now married because they have to parent together. She loves Scott like family and she really likes Maggie and they are two of the most stable, trustworthy people she knows, but she has never looked at them together as models for a relationship to strive for.</p><p>Now, there are Bucky and Steve, who don’t quite work either as something to achieve because it is impossible. Steve and Bucky, she has thought until very recently, have unfair love, storybook love. Shamefully, for the better part of a year, Wanda had watched them with ugly, diamond-hard jealousy that she hated herself for. She loves Bucky, loves him more than almost anything in the world. There was no resentment, just disbelief that his childhood soulmate had stumbled into his life and rescued him and an awful wish that something along those lines would happen to her. She knows, from watching them, that the things they have gone through together since before Wanda ever knew Bucky bond them in a way that comes along to almost no one. It is a lovely thing to witness for her best friend. It was also painful to witness when she felt her loneliness pressing in on her, making itself loud and impossible to ignore like some creature trapped in the walls.</p><p>But it occurs to Wanda, one morning, waking to a text from Sam asking if she wants to have a picnic tonight, that there is no need to want for anything other than she has. The thought makes her smile to herself.</p><p>It is a relief, to tell their friends about them. They are greeted with nothing but delight, which feels good, but more than that, it feels to Wanda like it signifies another barrier knocked down for them, like it is a new extension of their relationship. Sam being comfortable with his friends knowing about her is deeply comforting to Wanda. One evening, she goes with him and his group of college friends to eat takeout in the park, chipping nervously at the paint on her nails, extremely aware of the fact that she is hanging out with five Columbia graduates. They are all kind to her, extremely so. None of them ask where she went to school, which makes her believe Sam told them not to, and she wonders if there was a pang of shame for him to do so. Then she wonders if she is obsessing over nothing.</p><p>She gets bubble tea with Bucky a few days after that, in a coffee shop in downtown Brooklyn with cozy plush seats and shiny geometric lights. The question of whether or not she is good enough for someone like Sam has occupied a steady and unpleasant spot in the back of her head for a long time, but now it has writhed its way to the center of her recent thoughts. She and Bucky are tucked into a private corner; she took the spot facing the window, because across the street is one of the banks that used to be Alexander Pierce’s and she knows Bucky doesn’t like looking at them. The sun faded poster in the window advertises new management. Wanda has to stop herself from dwelling on the surreality of it all.</p><p>“So,” Bucky says, immediately after they’ve settled, “tell me about Sam.” They have not yet had an extensive conversation about her relationship, and it feels unintuitive to be doing so now, when Wanda has already tentatively settled into a life that includes dating Sam. She smiles.</p><p>“You know,” Wanda says, and flicks the wrapping of her straw at him. “He’s unbelievably nice, he makes me laugh a lot, he’s easy to talk to.” She debates adding, <em>he’s awesome in bed</em>, but she knows her audience well enough.</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Yeah, you know Sam.”</p><p>“Yeah, I do. But not in a boyfriend context.”</p><p>“He’s an awesome boyfriend,” Wanda says. Bucky looks delighted for her, and it gives her such a rush of warmth that she reaches across the table and squeezes his hand.</p><p>“I thought he was hot back in high school,” Bucky tells her. “Before me and Steve started dating.”</p><p>“Watch it,” she says. He laughs.</p><p>“I’m really, really happy for you, Wanda,” Bucky says. She casts her gaze, self-consciously, down. Outside, it has started to rain, and the window next to them is frosty and opaque. “What?” Bucky asks.</p><p>“Um,” Wanda says, rotating her straw. “It’s not gonna last.”</p><p>Bucky frowns. “What makes you say that?”</p><p>“Well,” she says, “mainly, the fact that he’s applying to PhD programs and six months ago I was working at a strip club.” Bucky raises his eyebrows. “Oh, shut up,” Wanda tells him, blushing. “It’s not the same. Me and Sam don’t have like seventeen years of history.”</p><p>Bucky snorts. “Wanda,” he says, “that’s bullshit.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“It… just because! ‘Cause anyone in the world who gets to date you should be doing everything in their power to make you happy, ‘cause getting to have you in their life is an unbelievable privilege.”</p><p>“Well,” she says, “I could say the same to you.”</p><p>“You do,” Bucky tells her, “but in this case, it happens to be true.”</p><p>Wanda rolls her eyes at him. Then she says, quietly, “I know I’m not, like, wife material for Sam. And I—that’s fine. But he’s, you know, very out of my league.”</p><p>“Oh my god, Wanda, that’s insane.” Bucky says, and she laughs. “That’s so stupid. You’re got a pretty warped view of yourself.”</p><p>“I know you aren’t saying that to me,” Wanda says, but it’s light. Bucky ducks his head a little.</p><p>“In your case, it happens to be true.”</p><p>“Bucky,” Wanda says softly, concerned, “you know you’re a fucking blessing to everyone in your life, right?” </p><p>He gives her a weak smile. “Takes one to know one.”</p><p>She leaves feeling a little lighter than she had before talking to him. She takes a bath that night in her small, uncomfortable tub, candles glittering and blinking along the edge of it, probably a fire hazard, and then gets into bed with a wine cooler and her tablet and sketches dreamy dresses until she’s too tired to keep her pen steady enough. And she is content with her life. She is even happy.</p><p>But their dissonance is bound to come up between her and Sam, and that same week, it does.</p><p>He invites her to dinner with his parents. “They wanna meet you,” Sam says, “I’ve told them a lot about you.”</p><p>“So this is my test,” Wanda says, “about whether I’m good enough for Sammy.” His mom had called him that in a text once. He rolls his eyes, sheepish.</p><p>“No,” he says, “they care about me, and I care about you, so.”</p><p>They go to a restaurant in Downtown Brooklyn. Wanda and Sam take the subway there, and it occurs to her, by the anxious tap of his leg and compulsive way he keeps rubbing his eyebrows, that he’s nervous. She does not realize, until he says it, that it’s because he wants her to like them as much as he wants them to like her.</p><p>“Sam,” she says, when he vocalizes this. “I’m gonna like your family.” She believes that, too. Steve has talked about how much admiration and gratitude he has for the Wilsons, and anyway, she thinks the people who produced Sam are probably pretty spectacular.</p><p>“I know,” he says, and laughs a little. “I just… you know how it is.”</p><p>But she doesn’t. Except for recently, when she went to Natasha’s house and met her parents and sister, she has never played introductions with almost anyone before, let alone a boyfriend. The people in her life who are important enough for that, until now, have all had impressively fucked up relationships with their parents, and everyone else just hadn’t mattered to her that much. She doesn’t say that. She kisses him on the cheek.</p><p>She was right, though: she does like Sam’s parents. His mother hugs her and his father shakes her hand warmly and they both give her a look she has come to understand means they know what happened to her family and are trying to express their sympathy without ever having to acknowledge it, but then Sam suggests they get a table and the discomfort falls away. The conversation falls into an easy rhythm from there. Mostly, they talk about Sam, and Wanda delights in stories about him in middle school and high school while he protests and grins. They know that she’s friends with Bucky, and they ask about how she met him and she tells them with as little pain included as possible. They ask about her work and classes and sound so genuinely interested that Wanda is touched. By the time the bill is paid and goodbyes are exchanged outside of the subway, almost all of her anxiety has vanished.</p><p>“They liked you,” Sam says immediately. He puts his arm over her shoulder, and she huffs out a laugh.</p><p>“Like you’d tell me if they didn’t.”</p><p>“Well, I wouldn’t say anything if they didn’t.”</p><p>“I like them a lot,” Wanda tells him, and doesn’t miss the flash of relief on his face. It endears her so much that she kisses him on the mouth, softly.</p><p>The worry is kept relatively at bay until a few nights later. Scott is staying at Maggie’s, so she invites Sam to spend the night at her’s. They are in a small grocery store a few blocks from her house picking up pasta and cookie dough, arguing over Tollhouse or Pillsbury, when behind Wanda, someone says, “Scarlet?”</p><p>She whips around, horrified. It takes her a long time to place the guy, but she eventually clocks him as a regular at her old club. Wanda takes a hard breath.</p><p>“Shit, I haven’t seen you in ages. You get a different job?”</p><p>“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wanda snaps. She surrenders the Pillsbury, grabs Sam’s arm, and half drags him to the cash register. She does not feel herself exhale until they’re outside again.</p><p>“Wanda?” Sam says quietly. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“Fine,” she says tartly. She becomes aware of her hands clenched into fists, and releases.</p><p>They are very quiet until they get home. Wanda dumps her coat and puts water on the stove, then goes into the bathroom where she breathes, pinches the bridge of her nose, and splashes water on her face. When she emerges, Sam is there, watching her anxiously.</p><p>“Wanda,” he begins.</p><p>“Drop it,” she snaps. It comes out harsher than she meant. “Fuck. Sorry.”</p><p>“I just wanted to see if you needed anything.”</p><p>She shakes her head. The water is not boiled yet, but she dumps half the box in anyway, then wonders why.</p><p>Sam’s mouth twitches. “If that’s how you make your pasta, we might have to reconsider this relationship.”</p><p>Weakly, she says, “It all ends up the same anyway.”</p><p>The sunset is spilling in in brilliant clementine light. They smirk at each other for a moment, and then Wanda sighs. “He used to go to the club.”</p><p>“I figured,” Sam says quietly. She waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t,</p><p>“It doesn’t bother you?”</p><p>“It bothers me that he made you uncomfortable.” Wanda scoffs. “I’m serious.”</p><p>“I can take care of myself, Sam.”</p><p>“I wasn’t saying you couldn’t,” he says softly. “I just wanted to see if you were alright.”</p><p>Wanda purses her lips at the ground. Agitated. She tilts her head towards the ceiling and says, “We’ve never talked about how I used to be a stripper.”</p><p>Sam turns the saltshaker in his hands. “I didn’t think you wanted to.”</p><p>“I don’t. But we can.”</p><p>“Well, we don’t have to.”</p><p>“So it doesn’t bother you?”</p><p>“Wanda, no.” He sounds almost hurt. “You were making money to live on your own at eighteen years old, and—and it was before. And even if you, you know, were still doing that, we could talk about it, but it’s not—it wouldn’t make me think anything about you.”</p><p>“I don’t get that,” she snaps. She feels like he has been broken open, and all of the anxiety that seized up in her is spilling out. “I don’t get why you’re here. I was just, um. You graduated from fucking Columbia, and are gonna get a PhD and you’ve got this wonderful family and an unbelievably impressive job and, um. I’m not that, obviously. And I was… was wondering if that is a problem. And if, um. You’re gonna be embarrassed about it at some point, when your family and friends ask where I went to school or whatever.” She pauses, returning to stirring the pasta. Her hand shakes.</p><p>“I’m not embarrassed of you,” Sam says, very quietly. “Wanda, fuck, I’d never… I think you’re incredible. I’d never think less of you for anything you’ve been through ‘cause I’m not a piece of shit.” She snorts half-heartedly. “Wanda. Don’t you have this conversation with Bucky all the time? Where you’re telling him how insane it is that he thinks Steve’s gonna leave him ‘cause of shit that happened to him?”</p><p>“It’s not the same,” Wanda says right away.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>Wanda cannot find a rational answer to that. She presses her weight into the counter for a moment and breathes, shutting her eyes.</p><p>“There are other things you don’t know about me,” Wanda says. “Um. I think I’m kind of a mess, actually.”</p><p>Sam kisses her shoulder. “I hope you’ll tell me,” he says quietly. “I wanna know everything about you.”</p><p>A sob rises in Wanda’s throat. She bites back on it and shudders, then becomes interested in scraping at a hangnail. Sam waits for her.</p><p>“I was pregnant once,” she says, very softly. Sam’s hand is moving in circles in the small of her back. “When I was twenty. It was some guy’s I didn’t even know. I met him at a bar and we had sex and the fucking condom tore and I couldn’t afford the morning after pill.” Saying it, it feels like an event from someone else’s life that she is recounting, something she saw in a movie or tv show, something too shrouded in melodrama to be hers. “Um. I found out six weeks later, when I didn’t have my period.”</p><p>At last, the water begins to bubble. “Obviously, I did not have a child.” She sucks in a breath through her teeth. “I, you know. Went to Planned Parenthood and got an abortion.” She does not feel guilty, she does not regret it, but she feels a chill pass through her when she speaks about it anyway, some anxiety induced by outer factors, some manufactured weight to this decision from the outside world, inescapable even in her own head. “I don’t regret it,” she adds, a little defensive. “I’d do it again.”</p><p>“Of course,” Sam says. His voice is soft, and she actually laughs slightly at his unwavering support, almost overcorrecting for all of the possible reactions he could have, endearingly desperate to let her know he loves her. She gives his arm a faint squeeze. “I’m sorry, Wanda,” Sam says softly. “That must have been a hard thing to go through.” She sighs and lifts her head, sweeping her hair aside for absolutely no reason.</p><p>“It’s fine. It’s… you know. I couldn’t have had a baby. It was the right thing.” She breathes in; she scrubs a hand over her face. “You’re only the fourth person who knows this. The woman who did it, obviously. And Bucky and Scott. ” They’d been there for all of it. Two weeks after not having her period and realizing, the horror slow and all consuming, like bugs crawling slowly up her body, she went to CVS and bought a pregnancy test. When she came home, Scott and Bucky were sitting on the couch, and she had cleared her throat.</p><p>“Um,” she said, and then she started to cry. They jumped up, got to her side, and she said, “I think I’m pregnant.” And then, when the two lines showed up, shimmering little razor marks, they’d gone with her to the clinic and held her hand while right wing Christian freaks waved signs in her face calling her a murderer and driven her home afterwards when she came out and slumped onto Bucky’s shoulder in the backseat. “What do you think of me, now?” Wanda whispers.</p><p>Sam wraps his strong arms around her. “I think you’re brave,” he says. “I think you’re extraordinary.”</p><p>She closes her eyes, pressing backwards into him, held together by the pressure of their bodies. “I think I might be too fucked up for a nice, stable, decent guy like you.”</p><p>“Having that happen doesn’t make you fucked up.”</p><p>“It’s not that. I actually think that makes me way less fucked up than if I was trying to raise a kid right now. It’s… the sum of all of the fucked up events in my life.”</p><p>A heavy pause. An ambulance somewhere far away, high and frantic enough that it reaches them in their small, small kitchen. </p><p>“My brother tried to kill himself,” Sam says softly.</p><p>Wanda, startled, turns to him. He’s grimacing down.</p><p>“Twice,” he says. “The first time, uh, I was like, eleven, so I didn’t really know what was happening ‘till later. But, um. The second time, it was my freshman year of college, and, uh. I was the one who found him. I called nine-one-one and they had me do CPR.” He bites his lip. His eyes look far away, a pain so uncharacteristic for Sam that it jars Wanda. “I still have nightmares about it, sometimes.” He smiles, joyless and weary. “So I don’t know,” Sam says, “maybe that’s why I want to be a psychologist. Fuck.”</p><p>“I’m sorry, baby,” Wanda says softly. She weaves their fingers together and squeezes. “Oh, Sam. That’s so hard.”</p><p>He nods, still looking away. “Um. Yeah, well. I’ve been seeing a really good therapist for like, two years, and you know, I’m on those anxiety meds, um. They help a lot. After that happened it was like… all I did was study and work out. ‘Cause my parents were so upset and, you know, I was trying to think about literally anything else. And if I was running or studying or applying for internships, it was hard to think about. And I was just, like, burning the candle at both ends, you know. I had a final that I just slept through, and that was when I was like, okay, fuck, this isn’t working. And my guy’s really good, and Zoloft has helped a lot. So, you know.” He smiles weakly. It is rare for her to see Sam look so weary.</p><p>Wanda wraps her arms around him and kisses his cheek, his forehead. Sam shudders a little and then sighs, and hugs her back, and they stay there, a tableau in the golden light, her hair sweeping over his arms until she pulls back to study his face.</p><p>“How’s he doing now? Gideon?”</p><p>Sam chuckles, weak and sad. “He’s alright. He’s better. I, uh, you know. I worry about him a lot more than I’m s’posed to worry about my older brother. We don’t, uh… we used to be real close, and it’s been harder. But he’s better.”</p><p>“That’s good,” Wanda says quietly. She lays both of her hands on his face and smiles when he kisses her fingertips.</p><p>“Thanks for listening,” Sam says, in a way that suggests he’s too tired to talk anymore. She nods, and they are quiet for a few more minutes. The room is too dark now, their faces cut with shadow and flat remnants of light. She flicks on the stove light, and white light falls over them.</p><p>“We still sharing trauma?” Wanda says, breaking the gentle silence.</p><p>Sam laughs and holds her closer. “If you want to.”</p><p>Wanda folds her hands over his. “I was raped by my sophomore year English teacher.” She doesn’t look at his face. His hand, moving over the small of her back, stills for a moment and then corrects itself. “He, uh. Was really nice to me, you know, kid who just lost her parents wasn’t doing homework or turning in any essays and he was still giving me As. And I’d—I’d sit in his classroom at lunchtime, ‘cause I didn’t know anyone at this new school and he was so <em>nice</em> and he’d talk to me about his wife and show me photos of his baby and he—he said he lost his family when he was a teenager, in a plane crash, which was probably a gigantic fucking lie, and then… I’d sometimes hang out there after school and one day he kissed me and I just—I didn’t want him to but I didn’t even stop him and then he. You know.” She grinds her palms into her eyes. “I skipped every single one of his classes after that and he still gave me an A. It was the only A I got that year.”</p><p>“Fuck, Wanda,” Sam says, voice soft and punched out. “I’m so fucking sorry.”</p><p>The air in the room feels stale. She wants to get up and crack a window, but her body is too lethargic to make itself. She grinds her palms into her eyes and gives the pasta a pointless stir. “Thanks.” She is aware of the hitch of Sam’s breath, the gentle whirring of gears in his head as he tries to think what to say. She takes a breath and says, “I’m not broken, you know.”</p><p>“God, Wanda. Of—of course you’re not.”</p><p>She arches out of his touch, not in discomfort, but as insurance for rejection. “You can say whatever you’re thinking.”</p><p>A moment of quiet. The light is the kind of burning golden sunset that only dips over the city on lucky nights every few weeks, and everything looks beautiful. She watches Sam’s hands, moving anxiously over her counter.</p><p>“I just… I can’t believe how strong you are,” he says quietly. “I don’t mean that in some, like… I don’t… are you aware of how impressive you are? To have gone through all the shit that you did, and become you?”</p><p>She grimaces, because accepting that would take too much from her. “I don’t think so,” she says, looking down. “I think no one knows how much pain they can take until they have to.” When she manages to lift her gaze to Sam, he’s gazing at her with unspeakable tenderness. She wants to make a joke, but none come to her. “You can ask me about it,” she says softly. “If you, um, have questions.”</p><p>Sam leaves his hand between them, waiting. She takes it and is surprised by how comforting it is. “What happened to him?”</p><p>Wanda smiles bitterly. “In prison. Kiddie porn. Scott found it and turned him in.”</p><p>Sam huffs out a laugh, more disbelief than anything else. “Jesus. Good.” A long pause. The light is deeper, the color of a melted puddle of popsicle. “Do you… when we have sex… it doesn’t, um, remind you, right?”</p><p>“No, Sam. Babe, no.” She is pained he even thought it. “I promise. I’d tell you if it did.” He nods, visibly relieved. “You’re really sticking around knowing all that?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Sam says, with no hesitation. “I… Wanda… this is real for me. I, um. I hope you’ll let me be in your life for a long time.”</p><p>Wanda kisses him, very lightly. Then she leans into his side, a twitch of something like tears in her throat when he puts his arm over her and kisses her hair.<br/>
There is a gratitude that can’t be put into words. The full understanding of the vastness of kindness in the world, in one’s life, washing over her in all of its unspeakable hugeness and leaving her breathless. Wanda closes her eyes and turns her head to the left to kiss Sam’s shoulder. They don’t move until the sun has dipped entirely out of sight and they have been holding each other in the dark for a long time.</p><p>***</p><p>So they go on the way they have, only another barrier between them has fallen and the inevitability of this ending begins to shrink in Wanda’s mind. It is a happy time, that fall. Between the classes she takes at Parsons and the time she spends with Sam or her friends, tucked up on one of their couches with hot chocolates or holding hands, swept up by the brassy autumn colors and the permanent flavors of pumpkin sugar in the air, Wanda is the happiest she has ever been.</p><p>They are curled up on her couch under a blanket one evening in November, watching and mocking The Notebook when Wanda’s door buzzes. Sam groans when she gets up for it, and she laughs at him, pulling on his sweater as she stands.</p><p>She pulls the door open and startles back. Jarvis is there, hands thrust into his pockets, eyes wide.</p><p>“Wanda,” he says, before she can say a word, “thank god. I’m so, so sorry. Let’s get back together.”</p><p>She is so bewildered she doesn’t say anything. Jarvis’s gaze travels past her stunned face and behind her, and when she turns, Sam is there, eyebrows raised, shoulders back.</p><p>“Who’s this?” Jarvis says, looking confused.</p><p>“What are you doing here?” Wanda finally manages. Behind her, Sam has stepped a little closer. </p><p>“I wanted to see you—”</p><p>“Jarvis,” Wanda says, appalled, “we broke up.”</p><p>He blinks and shucks his head. Then he says to Sam, “What are you doing here?”</p><p>“I’m her boyfriend,” Sam tells him. </p><p>Jarvis scoffs. He looks at Wanda as if for confirmation that it’s a joke, and she gives him a cold gaze back. Jarvis looks between them, blinking, bewildered.</p><p>“He’s a child,” Jarvis states, like he’s personally affronted.</p><p>“Buddy, I’m the same age as her,” Sam says. Wanda purses her lips against a laugh.</p><p>“Jarvis, go home,” she says. “We aren’t getting back together. Goodbye.” She starts to shut the door, and he steps in, body drawn a little taller.</p><p>“No,” Jarvis snaps. He grabs her wrist, and she jerks back, suddenly frightened. He’s never hit her, but she has never seen him look like this before. Sam steps all the way forward, straightening up.</p><p>“Back off, man,” he says, voice hard.</p><p>“You’re my girlfriend,” Jarvis spits, astonished, truly believing it.</p><p>“Fuck you,” Wanda tells him. When she yanks her wrist away from his grip. he grips it tighter.</p><p>Sam says, voice low, “You have one second to get your hands off of her.” She jerks her arm back again, and this time he lets go.</p><p>Jarvis looks between them, stunned. “Go fuck yourself,” Wanda says, “you complete egotistical, insensitive, insecure asshole.” Then, because she can, “You should know I faked it every time.”</p><p>“You bitch,” Jarvis says. Sam bristles behind her, but she squeezes his hand and he stays back and she is grateful for that. “You know I could date girls a hundred times hotter and less prudish than you. I hope this scumbag is happy knowing his girlfriend is a gold-digging little slut.”</p><p>“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sam snarls, shoulders reared back, but Wanda catches his eyes and shakes his head. Then she turns back to Jarvis and spits in his face.</p><p>“You fucking <em>bitch</em>—” But she slams the door and drags Sam up her steps again, where she slumps against the wall and gasps.</p><p>“Wanda, oh, my god, are you alright?” She nods, breathless, but she is shaken. She presses her hand to her chest, shuddering, the panic unwinding itself.</p><p>“I’m okay,” she manages. “It just freaked me out.” Her body had gone strangely numb, and now it is quivering back to normal. She had been more startled by all of it than genuinely terrified, but she still takes a seat and presses her palms to her face. “Oh, my god.”</p><p>“Jesus,” Sam says. “I’m so sorry that happened, babe. What a piece of shit.”</p><p>She laughs dryly. “Yeah, he was a charmer.”</p><p>“Are you alright?” Sam says again. She nods, leaning tiredly into his side, grateful for the arm he puts around her.</p><p>“Thanks for helping me handle him.”</p><p>“Nah, you did all the heavy lifting.”</p><p>She laughs. Relief is settling back into her, warming her up.</p><p>“I don’t know, you were maybe the most macho I’ve ever seen you.”</p><p>“Do you wish I’d punched him?” Sam asks, grinning.</p><p>She snorts. “No. He’s taller than you.” She does not state the obvious, that there were people starting to gather and if Sam, in his pajamas on a street in midtown, had thrown a punch at Jarvis while his white girlfriend waited off to the side, he would not be afforded the same benefit of the doubt that, say, Steve gets away with when he has been put in the same position with Bucky. They are both aware of this. </p><p>“Did you see that guy? He’s never thrown a punch in his life.” </p><p>She giggles. “You were perfect,” she tells him, and kisses his cheek. They stay close to one another for the rest of the night, but nothing else raps on the door to disturb them and when they do collapse into sleep, there is only peace around them.</p><p>***</p><p>An evening in December. Wanda is in her kitchen with Sam and Scott when her phone buzzes and Bucky’s name fills the screen.</p><p>“Hey,” she says, a little concerned. “You okay?” </p><p>“Wanda—he—Steve—” Splintered, horrible gasping. “He’s in… oh, god—we-we’re at the hospital—”</p><p>“Bucky,” Wanda says, panicked. Sam and Scott both look alarmed now. “Buck, babe. Slow down. Take a breath, honey.” His breath does not lose the horrified, suffocated quality. “Bucky, where are you?”</p><p>“Methodist,” Bucky chokes out.</p><p>“Okay, honey. I’m gonna come, alright? I’m with Scott and Sam, alright if they come?”</p><p>He whimpers something that sounds like, “Okay.” Scott is already at the door, pulling his coat on.</p><p>“Buck, what happened?”</p><p>He dissolves into sobbing again. She makes out a few half-formed words slurred on their edges, <em>attacked, out of nowhere, Brock.</em> Wanda swallows hard. Her mouth is very dry.</p><p>“Alright, baby,” she says. “It’s gonna be alright. We’re on our way.” Then, a terrible afterthought. “Buck, are you safe right now? Is, um—Is anyone around you who’s a threat?”</p><p>“What the fuck?” Scott says, from the doorway.</p><p>“I—I don’t think so,” Bucky says, the most formed sentence she’s gotten from him over this call. “‘M in the waiting room.”</p><p>“Okay. That’s good. We’re coming, Bucky. You want me to stay on the phone?”</p><p>He mumbles no, he has to go, and hangs up. Wanda clutches her phone to her chest and looks, terrified, between Scott and Sam, both of who are waiting, their shoulders braced, by the door.</p><p>Methodist Hospital, a half-hour later, sharp-edged fluorescent lights, the terrible neutrality of a hospital waiting room trying to be as uncontroversial as possible. Poor Bucky, looking faint and in unimaginable distress, a spot of blood on his chin, his eyes completely glazed with terror and misery. She holds him the way she had before, when he came home terrified, white and fragile as porcelain, but she cannot find the right words to bring him any comfort and neither can any of them and the hospital room is making her ill. She is flushed with guilt when she steps out, even though she keeps glancing back to make sure Scott’s got Bucky while he waits to hear if his life is about to be shredded to bloody confetti.</p><p>She finds herself on fifth street, the air cold and thick as dust. She closes her eyes and breathes in and out, too fast, lights burning in oily blurs through tears. She is terrified, primarily for Bucky but also because she does not want to lose Steve either and because even at twenty-three, she cannot enter hospitals without being hurled back to being fourteen and experiencing the end of the world.</p><p>Someone approaches behind her. She turns and straightens, but it is only Sam, eyes bloodshot and frightened, and he opens his arms and she falls into him, the comfort balanced between them, a terrible shimmering push and pull.</p><p>“Hey,” Sam says finally, “you okay? Hospitals?” </p><p>She nods. “And it’s just—that’s so fucking <em>selfish</em>, when Bucky and Steve are—”</p><p>“Hey,” Sam says, voice soft, “hey. It’s not selfish, Wanda. You being here is you being an amazing friend, okay?” She swallows. kisses her hair. “I’m sorry, babe,” he says sadly.</p><p>She chokes out a laugh. “It’s—I mean—it’s fucking fine, you know? That’s not the crisis of the night.” Sam gives a weak, humorless laugh of agreement, but doesn’t pull away.</p><p>“Thanks,” she says quietly.</p><p>“I love you,” Sam tells her.</p><p>She blinks and looks up. He’s staring at her, eyes big and exhausted, biting his lip.</p><p>“I know it’s a bad… time—”</p><p>“I love you,” she replies, and swallows.</p><p>Sam coughs, grief filled. She places her hands on either side of his face and raises herself on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, then his forehead. Sam makes himself small enough to bury his face in her shoulder and choke out a sob. Her fingers comb clumsily through his hair in what she hopes is comfort, and she whispers, “I love you, baby, it’s gonna be okay, I love you,” because even though, really, love does not fix anything but loneliness, it does provide unspeakable comfort, a balm to almost every pain. Sam holds her, clings to her, and when he kisses her face, the chill whirling around them in wind that threatens to tear the awning they are standing under off of its hinges, she can almost forget the exact contours of their current grief.</p><p>***</p><p>Steve is okay, probably because the universe decided, for once, that Steve and Bucky have suffered enough. Wanda is aware of that next day only in the fluorescent, too-hot images that terrible days take up in one’s mind;  sitting in a diner closeby with Scott, Sam texting them from the room when Steve wakes up, her second cup of watered down coffee sitting almost finished; the too-bright, buttery sky in Park Slope that jars her when she steps outside; hugging Sam, Scott, Bucky, Steve (carefully, a little tearfully, avoiding the worst bruises). It’s evening by the time they take a car back to Wanda’s apartment. She sits between Sam and Scott and when they pull up in front of her apartment, the driver has to clear his throat to wake all of them.</p><p>“Stay here,” Wanda tells him. He nods, too tired or weary to argue. Scott lends him sweats to sleep in and the two of them shower the hospital off together, chaste and warm, holding each other under the spray, exhausted hands through one another’s hair, before stumbling into bed and sleeping until eight pm. </p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>That is what makes Wanda call a therapist.</p><p>Sam has never told her to go to therapy, which she has always appreciated. But he has dropped little hints here and there, stories about how much therapy has helped him, names of therapists he knows or has heard of who are taking new patients. Mostly, Wanda has never gone to therapy because she couldn’t afford it. She is opposed only in the most generic sense of not wanting to reopen pain she has stuffed far enough back in her consciousness that it is only a dull, ringing ache that she knows, finally, how to live with. That, she knows, is exactly why she needs to go to therapy. After seeing what it has done for Bucky, she thinks everyone should go.</p><p>But that following week, she feels unstable and shaky. She reasons that she can chalk that up to having been unsure if her friend was going to die or not, but when she wakes up gasping that week, she does not see Steve’s gray, gaunt body but her parents, her brother. She has not come undone like this in a long time. One evening, she is at Sam’s, half-dressed in bed with him, her legs wrapped around his hips, when suddenly and vividly she is stiff all over and she has to push lightly at his shoulders to get him away. She cannot tell him what happened when he asks because she doesn’t know. That next day, she asks Bucky if his therapist knows anyone else who she thinks might be good.</p><p>The woman she sees is in the East Village and charges her next to nothing. Wanda goes once a week for one hour and sits stiffly on an orange couch, giving short answers to questions meant to break her open. She knows she is doing it wrong, but there is a physical halt inside of her when she is asked to talk about being in foster care or about living alone and being a stripper at eighteen, and she answers with mostly, <em>fines</em> and <em>I don’t knows</em> and <em>it was okays</em>.</p><p>In her third meeting, Caroline, the woman she is seeing, gently says, “Wanda, I know you’ve had some really hard things happen, and you told me you’re here because you think they still affect you in some ways. I know it’s hard, but we won’t be able to find ways to handle these memories and their affects if you don’t talk about them.”</p><p>Tears rise abruptly in Wanda’s throat. “I—” she says, and swallows hard, screws her eyes shut, “I don’t know where to start.”</p><p>“That’s okay,” Caroline tells her. “Let’s start with something a little easier. You’ve talked a bit about your boyfriend, Sam, and it seems like that’s going well.” She waits for confirmation. Wanda nods. “Is that your first serious relationship?”</p><p>Wanda nods again. “Yeah. I, um. Most of the other guys in my life romantically have been shitty at best.”</p><p>“In what ways?”</p><p>Wanda takes a deep breath, thinks about the sixty dollars she’s paying to be here. “The, um. My forty-eight year old sophomore English teacher took my virginity. That kinda set the tone, for a while.”</p><p>She goes to Sam’s last night. When she gets there, he is making them a pot of chili, old yellow apron thrown over his clothes, Kendrick on over a speaker. “Hey!” he says happily, letting her in. “How are you?”</p><p>Wanda hugs him and bursts into tears.</p><p>“Fuck, baby, you alright? C’mon, sit, I’ll get you some water—”</p><p>“I’m okay,” she manages. “I’m okay, I’m good. I just, um, came from therapy, and it was hard. But good. But hard.” She laughs, a little incredulous. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”</p><p>***</p><p>It remains hard, some sessions more than others. Wanda likes Caroline, though, and trusts her. She usually cries in that office and leaves feeling like she has broken through some hardened rock formation and sent a mudslide tumbling out from behind it, but when it has settled the ground glitters and breathes again, plants springing up from formerly dead soil. That is how she comes to think of healing. She says that to Bucky one night, and he tells her maybe she should be the writer.</p><p>Spring comes, and with it, the horrible realization that her and Scott’s lease on their apartment will be up soon, and she knows that Scott is not going to renew it. Maggie has just found out she’s pregnant, and even though he hasn’t said anything yet Wanda is aware that they will be moving in together. She can’t pay rent on that place alone and she doesn’t particularly want to. That leaves her with the options of moving somewhere else or finding a new roommate. The former is impossible and the latter is deeply unappealing. She knows it’s coming, but when Scott sits her down and tells her, gently, that he’s getting a place with Maggie, a new wave of anxiety comes over her.</p><p>“You should look for a place near us,” Scott tells her immediately. Clearly, he feels guilty that he’s leaving. “That way you’d be close to work and to us. I was looking at studios over there at one point.” Wanda smiles indulgently. It endears her that Scott worries this much, after all these years. </p><p>“You wouldn’t be annoyed with me, living a couple blocks away, popping over at midnight for Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese?” She elbows him. He grins, shaking his head.</p><p>“I’ll be annoyed if you don’t come over at midnight,” he tells her. Wanda smiles, sweeping her hair back.</p><p>“Maybe,” she says. “Yeah, sure. I like the Village. Be easy to get to work from there.”</p><p>“You told Bucky you’re moving yet?” She shakes her head. “Any reason?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Wanda says, “‘cause he’s gonna offer a gigantic financial contribution and I don’t want that.”</p><p>Scott grimaces in agreement. “It might not be bad, though. I mean—you know how hard it is to find affordable places in New York.”</p><p>“Yeah,” she says, “but I’m not having him and Steve pay my deposit, or anything.”</p><p>“Alright,” Scott says. “Fair enough.” They fall comfortably quiet, forks scraping against the bottom of their bowls, the occasional shriek of laughter or distant ambulance rising up from the street.</p><p>“I miss him living here,” Wanda says suddenly. Scott looks up, fork halfway to his mouth. “Do you?”</p><p>He gives her a sad little smirk. “Yeah. I know… I know it’s really, really good that he’s got Steve. But I miss playing Minecraft with him at two am.”</p><p>They smile at each other. “I mean,” Wanda says, “we could just call him.”</p><p>Later that week, she gets drinks with Natasha at the bar they’d gone to almost a year before, a place that has now hollowed out its own comfortable spot in Wanda’s personal map of her favorite places in New York. They sit at a tall table in the corner that they always sit at, drinking rum and Cokes, bursting into laughter when two more arrive from two generically hot former frat boys at the counter.</p><p>“I’m a lesbian and she’s dating my friend, but thank you!” Natasha yells, raising her drink.</p><p>“Bummer!” one of them yells, and waves regrettably. Wanda and Natasha grin at each other and then dissolve into laughter again.</p><p>“Cheers,” Wanda says, and they touch glasses. She takes a sip, then says, “Did I tell you I’m thinking of moving.” Nat raises her eyebrows. “Scott’s moving in with his girlfriend and I’d rather find a studio than a new roommate.”</p><p>“That’s big. Where are you thinking?”</p><p>“I don’t know. Maybe the Village, be closer to work.”</p><p>“You’d be closer to me,” Nat says happily. Wanda is visited by such a rush of affection for her that she reaches across the table for her hand and squeezes. “That’s awesome.”</p><p>“Thanks,” she says. “I mean, trying to find a place that’s not absurdly expensive might be unfeasible, but we’ll see.”</p><p>Natasha looks thoughtful. “Can I ask you something you don’t have to answer?” Wanda waves her hand in an all-encompassing <em>go for it</em>. “When you turned eighteen, did you get any of your family’s money?”</p><p>Wanda blinks, not expecting the question. “Oh. Um, no.” Natasha raises one eyebrow. “No, I… we didn’t have much.”</p><p>“But you never saw anything?”</p><p>Wanda shakes her head. “I mean, I obviously thought about it. But, like, I never knew who to get in touch with for it, and I didn’t think there was anything left, and if there was, it would’ve gone to me.”</p><p>“Huh,” says Natasha.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“No, I just… I mean, this isn’t my area really, but I think you should’ve gotten something. Like—and please tell me to shut the fuck up if you don’t wanna talk about this—but I know you were in foster care, so I’m assuming, um, they didn’t have a person appointed to be in charge of their assets. But unless they set up a will saying otherwise, that money should probably go to you. And it’s probably somewhere.” Natasha stirs her skinny straw and shakes her head. “You’re more familiar with the situation than me, obviously. I just wondered if you’d ever talked to a lawyer about that.”</p><p>“No,” Wanda says. She feels flushed suddenly, this possibility awhirl in her head. “No, um. Back after, um, my parents died, I know I heard conversations about it, but… but you know. I was a kid.”</p><p>“Of course,” Nat says. “And these systems are designed to be confusing. Actually, Peggy has an auntt who works in estate laws. Is it alright if I ask her about this for you?”</p><p>“Seriously? Nat, that’d be fucking amazing.”</p><p>“Yeah, of course.” </p><p>“If this actually works,” Wanda says, “then I owe you a dinner purchased with inheritance money.”</p><p>Nat snorts. “Yeah, I’ll send you a list of acceptable restaurants.” Then she raises her glass, and Wanda follows suit, grinning, happy and warm in the whirl of noise and music and the closeness of her friend.</p><p>***</p><p>A few days later, she meets Sam for brunch at a diner almost exactly halfway between their apartments. He is there already when she arrives, and she slides into his side of the booth to kiss him. She knows it is too soon to be thinking like this, but she wonders if perhaps they aren’t together, physically, as much as would be ideal, and if that could be remedied with cohabitation.</p><p>“How have you been?” Sam asks her. His eyes are tired but bright and warm.</p><p>Wanda grins, kisses him again, and slides into the seat across from him. “I saw you two days ago.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know. But that’s two days of life developments.”</p><p>“Actually, there have been developments.” She tells him that she’s being put in touch with Peggy’s aunt about a possible inheritance that, if it works out, would significantly change her living situation. Sam listens, then says, “Oh, shit.”</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“That’d be… I mean, I don’t want to say amazing given the circumstances, but it’d be great.”</p><p>Wanda snorts. “It would. God. I’ve thought about if my parents had any money but, uh, I assumed they didn’t.”</p><p>Gently, Sam says, “What did your parents do?”</p><p>Swallowing hard, Wanda says, “Um, my mom was a secretary at an elementary school. My dad was an electrician. So they wouldn’t be, you know, rolling in it.” She smiles vaguely down. “My mom’s like, ultimate dream was to open a jewelry store.” </p><p>“You’ve never really told me about your family,” Sam says softly. Wanda blinks at him. His eyes are the color of caramel in the dreamy morning light.</p><p>“I will sometime,” she says quietly. “I sometimes feel like… I don’t know. My memories of them are so finite and I worry about wearing them out. I know that’s stupid.” She doesn’t say that she uses those memories as comfort, and you can only turn over something before it stops eliciting its affect on you. It works both ways: she used to lay awake in high school replaying every part of her time in that English classroom until the blade of the memory had dulled so much she barely felt the cut.</p><p>“That’s not stupid, Wanda,” Sam answers. She smiles up at him sadly, then reaches across the table for his hand. He squeezes, but there is no pity in it, only the reminder of his presence.</p><p>***</p><p>A day later, Peggy’s aunt sends Wanda a warm email asking her if she can send back any identifying documents she has, anything to do with her parents and brother, and anything to do with their deaths. From the back of a box she never opens, Wanda retrieves her birth certificate, her passport, and her family’s death certificates.</p><p><em>Thanks, Wanda</em>, Peggy’s aunt emails back, <em>I’m reaching out to the estate court about this. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.</em></p><p>That turns out to be a week later. Wanda gets a call as she’s leaving class. “Is this Wanda?” a British woman says. “Hi! This is Angelina.”</p><p>“Hi,” Wanda says. She has an enormous tote bag full of various yards of fabric, and she has to balance her phone under her chin. “Hi, how are you?”</p><p>They exchange pleasantries, and then Angelina says, “So, listen. I’ve got some good news. The court assigned an estate manager to your parents’ assets, and when that happens, it can be incredibly easy to lose sight of where that money’s supposed to go. But I emailed with the court that handled your parents’ records, and they put me in touch with him, and if you appear in court you’ll be able to claim it.”</p><p>“Oh, my god,” Wanda says. “I—how much?”</p><p>“Fifty-seven thousand.”</p><p>Wanda has to prop herself against a wall and breathe. “I—thank you. Oh, my god. Thank you for doing this.”</p><p>Two weeks and one court appearance after that, fifty seven thousand dollars are wired into Wanda’s bank account. She puts a little more than half of it into savings. It is bizarre, this lump sum of her family’s value. She knows that there was nothing important, really, that she’s missing, no precious heirloom handed over to her, but it still feels like she’s been given something delicate. She cries that evening, curls up in a ball and sobs over missing them. She hasn’t done that in a long time.</p><p>But even though Sam didn’t want to use the word amazing, it is. A year’s salary appearing in her lap gives Wanda the ability to find somewhere to live like a wrapped gift, the doors—literally—flung open for her. She listens to Scott and tours three apartments in the West Village before she decides on one. It is three rooms, which is two more than she was expecting. The bedroom is small but clean, and the windows are big enough that light falls in and washes the space in a peaceful creamy color that whenever the sun is out. The kitchen is just off of the living room, but she finds she doesn’t mind; she only needs one couch or so, and a small dining room table that she finds on the street can be placed by the kitchen discreetly enough that the space doesn’t look too cluttered. It is so bright, compared to her other place. When she has begun the endless process of settling in, she finds that everything looks nicer there, the pale red couch she has always thought was ugly and her thin curtains with roses on them and little blown grass trinkets that she’d forgotten she had. It is space to hang up posters she has always wanted to but never had the room for, it is space to leave half finished sewing projects pinned to cheap mannequins around without Scott complaining that he thought it was a possessed intruder, it’s space to fall into in bed with Sam without being horribly conscious of her neighbors and their flimsy walls.</p><p>Almost immediately after moving, Wanda asks her landlord, a thirty something aspiring filmmaker with white guy dreadlocks who is renting out places owned by his parents, if she can paint the bedroom, and he says he doesn’t care as long as it looks good. </p><p>“Want to help me paint?” she asks Sam on the phone that morning. She has her bed set up, but almost nothing else. She’s in a bagel store a block away, the air rich with salt and cheap espresso, waiting for her breakfast and coffee. The guy making it holds a bag up, and Wanda balances her phone between her shoulder and chin as she grabs for it. It’s one of those moments that make her feel inexplicably adult.</p><p>“So our date tonight is gonna be manual labor?”</p><p>“C’mon,” Wanda says, “we’ll get all sticky and hot, and I have some sexy overalls to wear that you’ll have to take off of me after…”</p><p>Sam snorts. “Sounds hot.”</p><p>“It will be. Plus, I’ll get us takeout.”</p><p>A long, dramatic sigh. “Fine.” She can hear him smiling. “When should I come over?”</p><p>“Five?” </p><p>They start on opposite sides of the room. The bed has a sheet thrown over it and they each have to stand on cheap plastic chairs to reach the top third of the wall. Wanda puts on Patty Griffin and sticks her phone into a mug so the music fills the room up. They talk even not facing each other, laughing, glancing over their shoulders to smile at one another. It goes faster than Wanda had expected it would. They take a break when two and a half walls are done, sitting on the floor and eating Chinese takeout, their shoulders pressing together. They are each covered in periwinkle, and it smears over their skin and into her hair when they kiss but they do anyway. When they finish, it’s after nine, and they congratulate each other on their hardiness before showering together.</p><p>“Come spend the night at mine,” Sam says later. He’s getting ready to leave.</p><p>“I gotta work tomorrow morning.”</p><p>“C’mon, you gonna sleep on the couch?”</p><p>Wanda shrugs. “It’s a really comfortable couch.”</p><p>“I’ll buy you breakfast,” Sam says.</p><p>Wanda thinks it over. She’d love nothing more than to extend her time with him, get on the train with him and ride uptown to his lovely apartment and fall asleep in a soft tee shirt of his in a bed that’s just too small for them both. Instead, she says, “No, I have to open tomorrow. I can tomorrow night, if you’ll have me. I’m s’posed to give the paint two days to settle before I sleep in it.”</p><p>“Alright,” Sam says.</p><p>“I’ll miss you,” Wanda teases him.</p><p>She walks him out. Sam turns to her, lifting one hand to shield his eyes from the bright light above the door that falls over them, an oily yellow color in the velvet night. Wanda kisses him, sleepy and gentle, breathing into it when he puts his hands on her waist to steady her. They stand like that for a minute or two, their shadows stretched beyond them. When they fall apart, they smile at each other.</p><p>“I love you,” Wanda says. They’ve said it a few times, but it isn’t yet an every day statement.</p><p>“I love you, too.”</p><p>“Text me when you’re home,” Wanda tells him. He nods, kisses her one more time, and lopes down the stairs. Wanda watches his elegant long stride until he gets to the edge of her vision, turns to wave, and disappears around the corner.</p><p>***</p><p>For the first time in Wanda’s life, things start to take shape and continue to sculpt themselves into something solid and unshakeable. There is such beauty in having good things happen to her as they also happen to the people she loves. Maggie, very pregnant and overextended, asks her if she can be in charge of more at the shop, offers to let her start selling her own designs there, and raises her salary. In amazing succession, Sam gets into the doctoral program at Fordham, Bucky starts getting published in journals and he and Steve get left, relatively, alone, Natasha and Peggy get into law school, Scott and Maggie have their baby who makes them happier than Wanda has ever seen. There are other good things, smaller ones. A camping trip with Bucky and Steve and Sam, a trip to the beach with Natasha and Peggy, a one-year anniversary karaoke date with Sam.</p><p>She is home one morning, toasting herself a bagel and deciding if it’s worth ordering some more plants for her windowsill when Bucky calls her. </p><p>“You know how you’re getting a cat?” he says to her, immediately after she picks up.</p><p>“Hello to you too. No,” Wanda says, “I know how I said, in passing, that it would hypothetically be nice to have a cat.”</p><p>“Anyway,” Bucky says, “I found a cat for you.” He and Steve started volunteering at the shelter where they got their cats, and this has been a weekly conversation between her and Bucky, although he has never told her about a specific cat. According to Steve, Bucky has convinced a record number of people to make adoptions since he has started there. This doesn’t surprise anyone.</p><p>“I’m not getting a cat <em>now</em>.”</p><p>“Just hear me out, please? I’m sending you a photo.”</p><p>Wanda huffs. Thirty seconds later, a photo comes through from Bucky.</p><p>The cat is tiny and hairless, big dark alien eyes gazing at the camera in confusion. Fucking Bucky, who knows she adores hairless cats. One of her friends from the club has one, and every time Wanda has met him he’s nuzzled up to her face, astonishingly velvety and soft for having no fur, and demanded a pet. She sighs.</p><p>“You there?”</p><p>“Mhm.”</p><p>“Her name’s Clementine,” Bucky informs Wanda.</p><p>“Fuck,” Wanda says softly.</p><p>“That’s what I like to hear.”</p><p>“That was not a yes.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“‘Cause I—I can’t just adopt a cat out of nowhere!”</p><p>“Why not? I did it with two cats.” Wanda rolls her eyes, then remembers Bucky can’t see her. “Just come meet her. I’ll pay for an Uber over here for you.”</p><p>“If I do that, I’m gonna adopt her.”</p><p>“Exactly.”</p><p>“Jesus, Bucky, you’re so fucking annoying,” Wanda tells him.</p><p>“I know,” Bucky answers. She can hear him grinning. “How about this. Adopt her for a week and if you don’t want a cat after that, I will take her.”</p><p>Wanda bursts out laughing. “Steve know you’re making this deal?”</p><p>“Nope. And he never has to, ‘cause you’re going to be obsessed with her by tomorrow.”</p><p>***</p><p>Infuriatingly, he is correct.</p><p>Clementine, small and light enough to sit on Wanda’s flat palm while she walks around, skitters under her bed for the first two nights and emerges occasionally to dart around for her food and, eventually, the litter. The third morning Wanda has her, she wakes up to an unfamiliar pressure on her face and realizes it is the cat’s paw. </p><p>“Hi,” Wanda says.</p><p>“Mrow,” says Clementine. Wanda snorts, and strokes one finger over her wrinkly little forehead. Clementine plops herself down and purrs, a tiny noise that makes Wanda’s heart flip over in her chest. </p><p>“Why do you have so many folds?” Wanda asks her, and pokes her lightly. She licks Wanda’s fingertip. “I guess you’re my daughter now, huh?”</p><p>Two nights later, the adoption finalized with some texts to Bucky admitting he was right, Clementine nestles in her shoulder in bed and falls promptly asleep. Sam is next to her, shaking his head at them. “You really had to go with the bald one?” he says to Wanda.</p><p>She fake-scowls. “Don’t be fucking rude.”</p><p>“I will admit she’s a cutie,” Sam says. “She’s a weird little alien cat.”</p><p>“You might have to live with her one day.”</p><p>“Ms. Maximoff,” Sam says, and grins at her, “are you asking me to move in?”</p><p>Wanda flushes. “I said one day. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”</p><p>They both laugh, and then Sam kisses her. “Not in front of the baby!” Wanda tells him, and he rolls his eyes but when she kisses him again, they both smile.</p><p>
  <em>2015</em>
</p><p>One year later, they are making breakfast in Wanda’s apartment. Clementine nuzzles against Sam’s hand as he scrambles eggs and Wanda butters their toast. There have been many mornings like this, but they never appear to Wanda less shimmery and spectacular, the under-appreciated privilege of a morning in a home she loves with a man she loves.</p><p>“You won’t believe this,” Sam says, glancing up from the pan. “I forgot to tell you last night. Our landlord asked if we wanna renew the lease for six hundred dollars more a month.”</p><p>“Jesus,” Wanda says, “what a dick.”</p><p>“Yeah, I told him as much. Gotta look for a new place, though.” Clementine, in sympathy, bats his hand.</p><p>“Well,” Wanda says, and sets down her knife. “There’s one right here, if you want it.”</p><p>Sam looks up mid-pet. “What?”</p><p>A beat; Clementine meows, annoyed at her lost attention. “I mean,” Wanda says, a little sheepishly. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to ask you.”</p><p>Sam stares at her; then, slowly, a grin breaks over his face. “Oh, my god. Yeah. Are you sure?”</p><p>“I am so, so sure if you are.”</p><p>Sam, in one swift motion, wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her. She laughs, butter knife clattering to the counter, and flings her arms around his neck.</p><p>“If it doesn’t work,” Sam says, when they’ve broken apart, “we can always, you know. Change our minds.”</p><p>“Yeah,” she says, and grins. “Of course.”</p><p>One month later, they move in together for the rest of their lives.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>uhhhh i know i said i'd post that third chapter part by now but i am still figuring out where i want it to go so it may be another couple weeks i promise i wont forget it tho</p><p>cafelesbian on tumblr, lots of love to you all</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>cafelesbian on tumblr!!! the fact that you guys read and comment on these stupid things i write when i’m bored makes me so :’))) i love u all so much</p><p>Also I will probably not update eitd this weekend bc life is busy but I hope this eases the pain a bit? Part 2 to come eventually</p></blockquote></div></div>
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